Dual-Band Dual-Mode Textile Antenna/Rectenna for Simultaneous Wireless Information and Power Transfer (SWIPT)

This article presents a textile antenna for dual-band simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT). The antenna operates as a 2.4 GHz off-body communications antenna and a sub-1 GHz (785–875 MHz) broad-beam rectenna. Incorporated within the broadside microstrip antenna is a high-impedance rectenna for sub-1 GHz power harvesting. Utilizing antenna-rectifier co-design, the rectenna eliminates the rectifier matching network. The textile antenna is fabricated on a felt substrate and utilizes conductive fabrics for the antenna. At 2.4 GHz, the antenna achieves a realized gain of 7.2 dBi on a body phantom and a minimum radiation efficiency of 63%, with and without the rectifier. The rectenna achieves a best-in-class RF to dc efficiency of 62% from 0.8 <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mu \text{W}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>/cm², representing over 25% improvement over state-of-the-art textile rectennas and demonstrating that SWIPT does not detrimentally affect the energy harvesting or communications performance. The antenna/rectenna occupies an electrically small area of <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$0.213\times 0.19\,\,\lambda ^{2}_{0}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>. This antenna is the first dual-band, dual-mode antenna demonstrated on textiles for SWIPT applications and the first dual-band matching network-free SWIPT rectenna.