Experimental study of rectenna connection for microwave power transmission

There are two factors that decrease conversion efficiency from microwave power to dc power. One is mutual coupling of rectenna elements. The other is change of circuit conditions due to rectenna connections. In this work, we investigate effects of rectenna connections on output characteristics with two rectenna elements. We examine the output powers of rectennas connected in series or parallel and compare them with the sum of their individual maximum output powers. The experimental results indicate that the parallel connection produced a higher output power than the series connection did. The output power was approximately equal to the sum of maximum output powers of the individual rectennas.