A Review of Miniaturized Advanced IC Rectenna for Energy Harvesting Applications

Abstract

This article presents a review of different types of miniaturized rectenna integrated circuits IC used for energy harvesting applications such as medical applications. The rectenna design consists of two basic components: an embedded antenna that collects radio-frequency RF energy from the surrounding environment, and the rectifier circuit that converts AC-RF energy values into DC voltage for usage in low-power electronics devices such as implantable medical devices (IMDs). Microwave Schottky diodes HSMS-285x and SMS-763x series are used as a voltage doubler rectifier with an implanted antenna to improve conversion efficiency and the output voltage at a given input power and appropriate load. There are many challenges in the implantable rectenna IC design such as biocompatibility, miniaturization, patient safety, compact size, resonant frequency, bandwidth, radiation efficiency, and insensitivity to detuning. This review article summarizes the overall rectenna research carried out for new different design strategies in implant medical applications that operated at industrial scientific, and medical (ISM) bands such as 2.45GHz and 5.8GHz.