Integrated cooperative radiofrequency (RF) and kinetic energy harvester
Résumé
This work demonstrates an integrated cooperative power harvester collecting both RF and kinetic energy simultaneously. A permanent magnet and coils based kinetic generator and a RF energy receiving antenna are combined on one single board with a rectifier circuit. The prototype has a dimension of 50 mm × 80 mm, similar to the size of a credit card. Cooperative harvesting mode enables to improve diode's power conversion efficiency (PCE) significantly and greatly enhances the resilience of the harvester in an ever-changing environment. Measurement results indicate that this cooperative harvester helps increase the DC output power by at least 50% when both injecting power is under -37 dBm and nearly 100% while both reach -45 dBm, compared with the direct superposition of harvested power from separate RF and kinetic excitation modes.