A low-cost wide-angle multi-beam coverage Bruce rectennas for energy harvesting applications

This paper demonstrates a low-profile, efficient and wide-angle rectenna array for energy harvesting and wireless power transmission in the 5G mid-band. Specifically, the device consists of a set of onboard Bruce-array antennas operating at the same frequency (5.8 GHz) but with different radiation angles, so as to achieve the radiative energy harvesting in the spatial multiplexing form. The Bruce-array antennas can efficiently receive RF signals with incident angles ranging from -60° to 60°, with a peak gain larger than 7.89 dBi. A suitable power management system is also proposed for this arrayed rectenna system. The rectenna panel can exhibit a conversion efficiency of 60 % at input power of -2.2 dBm over a wide range of reception.