Theory and Experiment of Pulse Wave Rectifier with High Efficiency

In this paper, the pulse wave (PW) rectifier of the Schottky diode is theoretically analyzed using the microwave equivalent circuit. It is found that the duty cycle of PW is inversely proportional to the load resistance of the rectifier when the amplitude of the input pulse is the same. Therefore, a stable high-efficiency rectifier can be designed by changing the value of the load resistance when the duty cycles are different. A grounded coplanar waveguide (GCPW) rectifier for the pulse wave is designed to verify this rule. The rectifier is simulated by ADS software and verified by the measurements. When the duty cycle of PW varies from 0.01 to 1 and the input pulse amplitude is stable at the operation frequency of 2.38 GHz, the measured rectifying efficiency can be maintained at the peak efficiency of 76.1% by adjusting the load resistance. However, when the input signal of the rectifier is the continuous wave (CW), the rectifying efficiency is only 3.9% at the same input power amplitude. The proposed rectifier has a simple structure so that it can obtain a high efficiency and has a compact size of 0.22λ0 × 0.11λ0. It can be a good candidate for simultaneous wireless information and power transmission (SWIPT) for low-power electronic devices in the Internet of Things (IoT).