Compact planar inverted-F antenna for mobile RF energy scavenging system

With a promising future for generation of electricity to power electronics, RF energy scavenging has become a matter of significant interest in recent years. In this paper, a small-size printed planar inverted-F antenna (PIFA) is designed dedicated for compact mobile RF energy scavenging system to extract power from ambient RF energy. The proposed PIFA has its working frequencies at about 900 MHz and 1800 MHz to form lower and upper band that cover GSM 900 and DCS 1800 respectively, yet it only occupies a small printed area of 20×40 mm² on the system circuit board. Power around -15 dBm is received by proposed antenna at distance of 500m from base station which reveal reasonable performance for RF energy scavenging at moderate distance.