5.8 GHz Simple Compact Folded Dipole Rectenna without Chip Capacitor

The rectenna is an RF power receiver converting the received power into DC power that can then be consumed by other subsystem. Recently, the compact rectenna technology has gained great attention in many of the sensor applications [1, 2]. Designing of a rectenna system is difficult in matching the antenna impedance with that of the rectifying diode. Unlike the impedance matching for traditional antennas, the conjugate matching method is needed for designing the rectenna to get high power transmission between rectenna and diode. In most of the published literatures, a matching network was designed between the antenna and rectifying circuit which increased the system design complexity and also extended the total rectenna size or layers [3]. In this paper, a simple wideband folded dipole [4] is modified for rectenna system design. The diode is directly connected with the antenna saving the matching network. The required conjugate matching can be achieved by adjusting appropriate geometry parameters of the antenna. The proposed rectenna has a very compact size, uni-planar structure, and low cost. In addition, the lumped chip capacitor is also saved by the embedded edge gap capacitor effect to further save the system cost. A 5.8GHz rectenna is designed and measured to show this novel architecture.