Ambient RF Energy Harvesting

Emily Mcmilin
December 15, 2014

Submitted as coursework for PH240, Stanford University, Fall 2014

Introduction

Harvesting and converting electromagnetic

radiation into electricity is well established for
frequencies in the electromagnetic spectrum around
those of visible light. However, when our dominate
source of visible light dips below the horizon,
stored battery power must be used to meet
electrical demands for systems dependent on
photovoltaics alone. However, many new
applications are forcing a reconsideration of the
requirement for stored power in batteries or similar
charge storage devices. [1] Some examples of such
systems include devices that are:
too small to fit a battery, [2]

predominately ink-jet printed, rendering

battery placement impractical, or [3]

Fig. 1: Free space path loss plotted verse

distance at two carrier frequencies.

placed in very hard to reach places, where battery replacement is challenging. [4]

Tuning to Lower Frequencies

Fortunately, if any of these devices required energy on a gloomy day or overnight, there is often
abundant, although not- visible, electromagnetic radiation available. This electromagnetic radiation is
not from an extraterrestrial source like the sun, but instead a very much terrestrial source: the
television, radio and cellular towers that dot our planet. Like sunlight, the power emitted from these
towers that is not captured by an energy collector, will end up (just slightly) heating the pavement.
However, unlike photovoltaics, the energy collectors at these lower radio frequencies (RF) are
antennas, and the circuits attached to them. For all the antennas that are collecting this energy for
purposes other than what the transmitters intended (i.e. for television broadcast or cellular
communications), this electromagnetic energy can be considered part of the environmental ambience,
available to be repurposed.

How Abundant is Ambient RF Energy?

For reasons that will soon be made more obvious, the distance between the RF collector (or harvester)
and the RF tower is critical to the performance of the collector. However, the density of the towers, as
well as transmission power level at each tower, varies from region to region. In particular, urban and
semi-urban regions with higher population densities (and thus often a higher density of towers)
generally have the highest levels of ambient RF energy in the frequencies of interest. A survey
conducted in London, found that over 50% of locations just outside of London's 270 underground
stations, has sufficient ambient RF energy to power RF harvester circuits tuned for digital television
or various cellular transmission technologies (ranging in frequency from 300 MHz - 3 GHz). [5]
In Japan, where television broadcasts are limited to a power level of 100 kilowatts, signals from seven
television broadcast were detected in downtown Tokyo (at a distance of about 6.5 km from the
mountain top broadcasting site), with measured power levels that could be exploited by an RF
harvesting circuit. [6] Nonetheless, referring to their measured results in table 1, we can see that the
power level has decreased by more than 9 orders of magnitude (over 90dB): from a hundred kilowatts
to tens of microwatts.
Freq. (MHz) Application Wireless Power Capture by Dipole (microwatts)
560-580

Digital TV

18.54 - 30.76

520-540

Digital TV

21.44 - 35.58

540-560
510-520

Digital TV
Digital TV

494

Analog TV

480

Digital TV

487

Analog TV

39.02 - 64.76
0.007 - 0.011
8.88 - 14.74

49.77 - 82.60
51.23 - 85.03

Table 1: Signal strengths measured from seven television broadcast channels, detected in
downtown Tokyo about 6.5 km from the mountain top broadcasting site. [6]

Influencing Factors
Although some of the power losses seen in the table above can be attributed to inefficiencies in the
power harvesting circuitry, the overwhelming cause of power loss is due to a phenomenon referred to
as free space power loss. Referring to the equation for path loss shown below, we can see that power
of a signal scales with the square of distance, r, due to the effect of path loss over that distance.
free space path loss = (

4r

)2

where is the wavelength (speed of light divided by the frequency). It is also noteworthy that the
distance is linearly proportional to the frequency. Thus decreasing the carrier frequency of the signal
by x, increases the distance the signal reaches at a given power level also by x. The relationship
between distance, path loss and carrier frequency can be seen in Fig. 1.

Finally, we must also address for the energy efficiency of the harvesting units themselves. It is well
known that the computational efficiency of chips is increasing at an exponential rate. Following the
process detailed in Smith, we can see if the increases in computational efficiency can also be extend
to energy efficiency. [7] We start with a metric of "instructions per second" to capture computational
efficiency and we divide this by the energy used per second (aka the "Watt", which is equivalent to
the unit "Joule per second) to come up with a figure of merit with units of "instructions per Joule".
This is represented as the equation [7]
instructions per second
Watt

instructions/second
Joule/second

instructions
Joule

With the informed assumption that the microcontroller will be the most energy hungry component,
Smith surveyed almost four decades of microcontroller's data sheets, and selected the most efficient
microcontroller (given the above figure of merit) for each year. [7] He found that the relation between
time and the number of "instructions per Joule" was indeed exponential (proportional to 2(t/), where t
= time and = 2.17, both with units of seconds).
We can thus expect to see more and more ambient RF energy harvesting devices in our future, even
beyond our ambient energy rich cities.

Emily McMilin. The author grants permission to copy, distribute and display this work in unaltered
form, with attribution to the author, for noncommercial purposes only. All other rights, including
commercial rights, are reserved to the author.

References

[1] A. Eisenberg, "Bye-Bye Batteries: Radio Waves as a Low-Power Source," New York Times, 17
Jul 10.

[2] M. Tabesh, et al., "A power-harvesting pad-less mm-sized 24/60GHz passive radio with on- chip
antennas," IEEE 6858380, 10-13 June 2014.

[3] K. Sangki, et al., "Inkjet-printed RF energy harvesting and wireless power trasmission devices on
paper substrate," IEEE 6686824, 6-10 Oct. 2013.
[4] T. Galchev, et al.,"Energy Harvesting of Radio Frequency and Vibration Energy to Enable
Wireless Sensor Monitoring of Civil Infrastructure" Proc. SPIE 7983, 798314, 18 Apr 11.

[5] M. Pinuela, et al., "Ambient RF Energy Harvesting in Urban and Semi-Urban Environments,"
IEEE Trans. Microw. Theory 61, 2715 (2013).
[6] R. Vyas, et al., "A Battery-Less, Energy Harvesting Device For Long Range Scavenging of
Wireless Power From Terrestrial TV Broadcasts," IEEE 6259708, 17 Jun 12.

[7] J. R. Smith, Wirelessly Powered Sensor Networks and Computational RFID (Springer, 2013).