Design of Charge-Pump for Wireless Energy
Harvesting at 915 MHz
By: Milko Stoyanov and Mark McKean
Advisors: Dr. Prasad Shastry and Dr. Brian Huggins
Abstract
Panduit, a manufacturer of communication infrastructure products, requested a receiver be designed and implemented to harvest wireless RF energy to power remote sensors. In the first iteration, the RF signal will be transmitted from a base station operating at 915 MHz with future iterations using the RF energy in the digital TV bands. This report describes the design, simulation, and implementation of multiple RFDC charge-pump circuits. Recent literature describes the efficacy of such topologies for RF energy harvesting. Both 2 stage charge-pumps and 5 stage charge-pumps, optimized for different incoming power levels, are presented. These circuits, consisting of a matching circuit, diode-capacitor stages and a load, were designed and simulated using SPICE and ADS. The microstrip circuit boards were fabricated by Micro Circuits based on ADS designs and components inserted by the team members. The report compares simulated results to experimental results.
Report