Highly Integrated Electrically Small Magnetoelectric Dipole Rectenna for Simultaneous Wireless Information and Power Transfer

To enhance compactness in IoT devices, wireless power and information transmission can be integrated into a unified system. In this work, a rectifying circuit is highly integrated with an electrically small magneto-electric dipole antenna, forming the RF front-end of a simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) system. The rectenna comprises an electric dipole and a pair of split rings, with the rectifying circuit directly embedded within the structure. Specifically, the rectifying circuit is connected to the open slot of one split ring, facilitating efficient energy harvesting and power conversion. Furthermore, the miniaturized electric dipole is well-suited for data communication. To achieve high isolation, a periodic rectangular-patch structure is designed to reduce mutual coupling between the two ports of the dipole and split rings. The electric dipole antenna receives low power but ensures a satisfactory signal-to-noise ratio (SNR>59 dB in the input power of 0 dBm) for signal demodulation/decoding. On the other hand, the split ring with embedded rectifying circuit achieves a maximum power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 66.8% for wireless power transfer. The proposed rectenna has merits of electrically small (ka= 0.99), low profile and high isolation, making it suitable for remote powering of Internet of Things (IoT) devices and wireless information.