Compact folded dipole rectenna with RF-based energy harvesting for IoT smart sensors

For demonstrating autonomous operation of the Internet of things (IoT) smart sensors, the compact folded dipole rectenna with radio frequency (RF) energy harvesting is proposed. The rectifying circuits in the proposed rectenna consist of the impedance matching network and the voltage multiplier for the optimised received power. It has achieved the RF-dc conversion efficiency of approximately 23% when illuminated by a radio signal of 1 mW available power from the commercial UHF RFID reader.