Design of an Efficient Hybrid RF Solar Energy Harvesting System for Wireless Power Communication

Abstract

This project proposes a hybrid RF solar energy harvesting system to scavenge ambient RF signals at GSM 900 and solar energy from sunlight to supply energy for low power devices. This solution aims to overcome the limited lifetime of battery operated devices such as WSN nodes and IoT microconcontrollers by providing an environmental friendly and sustainable hybrid RF solar energy harvesting system. The system proposed brings about the complementary benefits of the RF energy harvester and the solar energy harvester. The hybrid RF energy harvester is made up of a RF energy harvester and a solar energy harvester. A two element microstrip patch antenna was designed and simulated using CST whereas the RF energy harvesting circuit was designed and simulated using PathWave ADS before fabrication and experimental testing. It consists of a voltage doubler rectifier, a single stub impedance matching network, and a low pass filter. Besides, the solar energy harvester was designed using EasyEDA software before fabrication and testing. The solar energy harvester encompasses a 3 W monocrystalline solar panel, a solar charger module with Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) a Lithium rechargeable battery, a battery protection Integrated Circuit (IC) and a DC-DC converter. The hybrid energy harvester in this project achieved a peak power conversion efficiency of 81 39 with a total of 2 3604 W output power