Powering Wireless Sensor Nodes using Ambient RF Energy

Wireless sensor networks are being deployed in various scenarios for environment monitoring. Sensor nodes operating on batteries have fixed lifetime. Various means of energy scavenging are being explored to achieve an autonomous, self-powered sensor node. In this paper, we propose a system for conversion of ambient RF energy to electrical energy that can be used to power the sensor nodes. The system consists of a 4times4 antenna array followed by a diode detector section, a DC combining section and power control and management module. We discuss in detail the overall architecture of the system, the design of the diode detector and the design of folded patch antenna using full wave EM simulator. The output DC voltages for various values of incident RF power are presented.