An Efficient RF Rectifier for Energy Harvesting Systems with Applications to Wireless Dosimetry

This work presents both a system-level overview of a wireless RFID-based X-ray dosimeter tag and a design of the energy harvesting module. The dosimeter tag is estimated to consume 263.1 µW of power and is designed to operate at a distance of one metre away from a 2.45 GHz intentional RF power source. This source is harnessed by the energy harvesting module, which consists of a: dipole antenna, matching network, Dynamic Vth Cancellation (DVC) rectifier, Smart Voltage Regulator (SVR), and off-chip ceramic capacitor. As part of the energy harvesting module, an RF rectifier employing DVC was designed and implemented in a commercial 0.13 µm CMOS process. Experimental measurements demonstrate that the design achieves a peak power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 49.7% at a power level of -12.0 dBm, an operational frequency of 2.45 GHz, and an output loading of 25 kΩ.