Microstrip antenna design applications for RF energy harvesting

Recently, the development of technology has progressed at an incredible pace, especially after the invention of semiconductors. This progress has led to the proliferation of technological devices. The increase in the world population and the constant use of technological devices by this population has led to an increase in energy consumption. Increasing energy consumption around the world has led scientists to conduct research to obtain energy easily and at low cost in different ways. There are dozens of different ways to obtain energy. One of these ways is to harvest energy from the freely circulating Electromagnetic waves consisting of various devices (Microwave and Radio wave) in the environment, under suitable conditions and with suitable equipment (Antenna and energy harvesting module). In recent years, the increase in the number of communication systems and other systems has led to an increase in frequency density and diversity in the environment. This situation has allowed the RF (Radio Frequency) energy harvesting method to be widely used in communication circuits. Thus, it has led to the formation and proliferation of systems capable of RF energy storage without interruption and at low powers. An RF energy harvesting jump system consists of 5 stages: antenna, impedance matching, filters, rectifier circuits and load. The storage and consumption of the energy made suitable for use in some devices by batteries or battery-like storage devices incurs various costs. One of the methods of reducing these costs is to obtain energy by RF energy harvesting method from electromagnetic waves that are constantly circulating in a free state. RF energy harvesting skipping is a very popular solution method for low-power systems, since energy is provided uninterruptedly here, battery usage has been prevented, preventing environmental pollution that will occur in the environment as a result of both cost-reducing and storage device waste. In this study, microstrip patch antennas of different sizes were designed to harvest RF energy with a characteristic impedance of 50 ohms using the transmission line model. By making various changes to the designed antennas, antennas that will operate at both single-band and dual-band frequencies have been obtained. Later, step-by-step optimizations were made with simulations to obtain better antennas. After these stages, the production of two microstrip patch antennas with the best parameters, one with a single band and the other with a dual band (Dual band), was carried out with a printing circuit (PCB). The antennas manufactured were connected to the energy calculation module and single, two and three-dimensional graphical values of voltage values, return loss (S11), gain, directivity values were examined with a multimeter.