Dual-Domain Maximum Power Tracking for Multi-Input RF Energy Harvesting with a Reconfigurable Rectifier Array

This work proposes a dual-domain maximum power tracking (MPPT) technique for mul-tiple-input RF energy harvesting systems. A differential rectifier array is used to implement 4-chan-nel reconfigurable RF to DC power conversion, and an adjustable 4-bit capacitor array is designed to improve the impedance matching between the antennas and the rectifiers. Using the perturbation and observation (P&O) method, both arrays are adaptively configured in the background with the variations of the input energy and output loading. Experimental results show that the proposed circuit successfully tracks the maximum power points while harvesting RF energy, with the peak conversion efficiency of 49.06% when the input energy is −6 dBm. With the proposed dual-domain MPPT, the high efficiency range of the energy harvesting system is greatly extended to 21 dB (−21– 0 dBm).