52

IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. 3, 2004

A Rectenna Design With Harmonic-Rejecting

Circular-Sector Antenna
Ji-Yong Park, Student Member, IEEE, Sang-Min Han, Member, IEEE, and Tatsuo Itoh, Fellow, IEEE

AbstractA rectenna designed with a microstrip harmonicrejecting circular sector antenna at 2.4 GHz is proposed. As
compared to a conventional microstrip square-patch antenna, the
circular sector antenna using inset feeding exhibits high reflection
coefficients at the second and the third harmonics generated by a
diode. The rectenna with integrated circular sector antenna can
eliminate the need for an lowpass filter (LPF) placed between the
antenna and the diode as well as produce higher output power,
with maximum conversion efficiency of 77.8% using a 150- load
resistor.

Index TermsCircular-sector antenna, harmonic rejection,

rectenna.

I. INTRODUCTION

N order to transmit microwave power in free space, the

rectennas, which can convert RF energy to dc power, have
been studied [1], [2]. The rectenna is one of the most important
components for microwave power transmission. A typical
rectenna consists of a microwave antenna, a lowpass filter
(LPF), a diode, an LPF for dc path, and a resistive load as
shown in Fig. 1 [1], [2]. The most important consideration for
the rectenna design is how to obtain high efficiency.
There are two main considerations to achieve this goal. First,
maximum power should be collected and delivered to the rectifying diode. To this end, for the past several years, broadband antennas [3], [4], large antenna arrays [5], and circularly
polarized antennas [6], [7] have been built to increase conversion efficiency. The broadband antenna enables relatively high
RF power to be received from various sources in the frequency
range. The antenna array can increase incident power delivered
to the diode by enlarging antenna aperture and antenna gain,
while the circularly polarized antenna offers power reception
with less polarization mismatch.
The second consideration to acquire high conversion efficiency in most rectenna designs is the suppression of harmonics
generated by the diode, which re-radiate from the antenna as
power lost. Therefore, the rectenna requires microwave components such as an LPF between the antenna and the diode. In
addition, an LPF is required on the dc output side of the diode.
In this letter, a rectenna with a microstrip circular sector
antenna is proposed. The circular sector antenna suppresses
radiations of the second and the third harmonics [8] so that
an LPF between the antenna and diode can be eliminated. In
this way, additional insertion loss at the fundamental frequency

Manuscript received January 23, 2004; revised February 27, 2004.

The authors are with the Department of Electrical Engineering, University
of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1594 USA (e-mail:
jypark98@ucla.edu).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LAWP.2004.827889

Fig. 1.

Block diagram of the conventional and the proposed rectennas.

associated with the LPF in a conventional system can be

eliminated to produce higher efficiency. In addition, an LPF for
dc is designed in this letter for blocking harmonics as well as
the fundamental frequency to send them back to diode.
This letter is organized as follows. The overview of each circuit design including a circular sector antenna is first given. Then
the design of the rectenna is introduced and its RF performance is
validated with measured results. The proposed rectenna is compared with a reference rectenna using a conventional microstrip
square patch antenna. Finally, the efficiency of the rectenna is
measured to demonstrate the expected high efficiency.
II. SIMPLE RECTENNA CIRCUIT OVERVIEW
In general, a conventional microstrip square-patch antenna
shows resonant frequencies at multiple harmonics. If such an antenna is applied for the rectenna, the use of filters is necessary to
prevent radiation of harmonics generated by a nonlinear diode.
In order to avoid radiating the second and the third harmonics
from the antenna, a microstrip circular-sector antenna with a circular sector angle of 240 and a feeding angle of 30 from the
edge of the circular sector, depicted in Fig. 2(a), is introduced.
Because of the circular structure, the higher order resonances are
not harmonically related. In addition, due to high impedance of
the antenna, an inset feeding method with a quarter-wavelength
transformer is used for the impedance matching at 2.4 GHz. In
order to compare the performance of the antenna, a conventional
microstrip square-patch antenna is designed in Fig. 2(b).
In addition, a designed microstrip LPF can completely block
not only the fundamental frequency, but also the second and the
third harmonics on the dc side of the diode. Finally, the circularsector antenna and the diode rectifying circuit are combined to
measure efficiency in Fig. 3.

1536-1225/04$20.00 2004 IEEE

PARK et al.: RECTENNA DESIGN WITH HARMONIC-REJECTING CIRCULAR-SECTOR ANTENNA

Fig. 2.

53

(a) Microstrip circular sector antenna. (b) Microstrip square patch antenna [dimensions: w 1 = 91; w 2 = 5; w 3 = 30; w 4 = 25; w 5 = 505; w 6 =

1590; l = 880; r = 770; (Units: Mils) and a1 = 240; a2 = 30 (Units: Degrees)].

Fig. 3. Rectenna with a microstrip circular-sector antenna.

Fig. 5. Measured insertion and return losses of the LPF for dc.

Fig. 4. Measured return losses of the microstrip circular-sector and squarepatch antennas.

The rectenna is fabricated on RT/Duroid 5870 with a dielectric constant of 2.33 and a substrate thickness of 31 mils. An
Agilent surface mount RF Schottky barrier diode (HSMS-2820)
is used. An Agilent ADS 2003 circuit and momentum full-wave
simulator is utilized to predict the performance of the rectifying
circuit, antennas, and the LPF for dc path.
III. MEASUREMENTS AND DISCUSSION
A. Circular Sector Antenna and LPF Performance
Fig. 4 compares the return loss of a microstrip circular sector
antenna with that of a microstrip square patch antenna. Both
antennas present the same fundamental resonant frequency of
2.4 GHz and their 10-dB bandwidths are 12.2 and 24 MHz,
respectively.

The gain of the circular-sector antenna is 4.677 dBi, while

that of the square-patch antenna is 2.677 dBi. Since a nonlinear diode creates harmonics such as 4.8 and 7.2 GHz, the
circular-sector antenna is effectively used to block them from
re-radiation. The return losses at the second and the third
harmonics of the circular sector antenna are very high as seen
from Fig. 4. Hence, no LPF or bandpass filter (BPF) is required
on the antenna side of the diode.
Fig. 5 shows insertion and return losses of the microstrip LPF
for dc path for blocking the second and the third harmonics as
well as the fundamental frequency. Therefore, all signals except
dc go back to the diode to improve the efficiency of the rectenna.
By using the circular-sector antenna for harmonic rejection and
the LPF in Fig. 5, it is possible for microwave energy to be better
delivered to the rectifying diode to achieve high efficiency.
B. Rectenna Efficiency
In order to demonstrate the effect of harmonics for the efficiency improvement, a test setup is built in Fig. 6. A 10-dB
directional coupler is inserted between the circular sector or the
patch antenna and the rectifying circuit. In order to eliminate
4.2- and 7.2-GHz signals generated by the synthesizer, a bandpass filter whose center operation frequency is 2.4 GHz is added.
The applied input powers of the rectifying circuit at point A
are varied from 9 to 10 dBm. Each measurement is repeated
for load resistor values of 150, 250, and 350 Ohms, respectively. The measured converted power difference between the

54

IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. 3, 2004

Fig. 6. Test setup for the comparison of harmonic effect.

Fig. 8.

Efficiency versus input power at A with four variable resistor values.

By eliminating an LPF between the antenna and the rectifying

diode, it is feasible to construct a simple planar rectenna with
higher conversion efficiency. The simple design can be easily
extended into an array which can receive higher power density
from the air.
IV. CONCLUSION
Fig. 7. Power difference between the rectifying circuit with the circular-sector
antenna and that with the square-patch antenna versus input power at A in Fig. 6.

rectenna with the circular-sector antenna and that with the conventional square-patch is shown in Fig. 7. The rectifying circuit
with the circular-sector antenna provides higher output voltages.
Power difference with the three resistor values of 150, 250, and
350 Ohms is higher as the input power is increased. In addition,
the higher resistance of the load is, the larger the difference of
the rectified power presents. Therefore, the proposed rectenna
with the circular-sector antenna can help to obtain the higher
conversion efficiency by reflecting harmonics.
Finally, the circular-sector antenna is directly connected with
the rectifying circuit to measure conversion efficiency. The conversion efficiency, , is defined as follows:
(1)
where is the output voltage dropped across the load,
is the variable resistor value, and
is the input power of the
diode at point A.
Fig. 8 illustrates the efficiency of the rectenna with the circular-sector antenna as a function of the input power at A for the
various resistor loads. Four resistor values are selected, which
are 100, 150, 200, and 250 Ohms. Based on the data sheet of
the diode, up to saturation input power of 10 dBm is applied.
As the input power is increased, efficiency is also increased. A
maximum efficiency of 77.8% is achieved with the load resistor
of 150 Ohms when input power is 10 dBm.

A simple rectenna design with the circular-sector antenna has

been implemented. The circular-sector antenna with a sector
angle of 240 and an inset feeding point at 30 from the edge
avoids the radiations of harmonics. It makes it feasible to eliminate an LPF which cause insertion loss for the fundamental
frequency. Therefore, high-efficiency rectenna can be achieved
with a simpler design. Moreover, this configuration can be easily
extended into an array design.
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