What is it about?
Harvesting energy from ambient sources to power small devices is nowadays quite common. Ambient sources include solar energy, vibration... and electromagnetic fields. Indeed, wireless communication systems rely on electromagnetic radiation and wave propagation such that nowadays, with the plethora of wireless systems deployed (5G, V2X, ...), the environnement is richer in stray electromagnetic waves. Why is the harvesting of this ambient electromagnetic waves not such a popular solution? Our paper studies and proposes a technological solution to make this ambient source more appealing for energy harvesting.
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Why is it important?
To date, radio frequency electromagnetic waves is not readily considered as an ambient source for harvesting since the system not only suffers from poor efficiency but also from too low power levels. This is one of the reasons why devices harvesting ambient radiofrequency electromagnetic waves are not as popular as it could be. Our contribution addresses this issue through the use of meta surfaces (non-conventional surfaces). The power levels reached are shown to be high enough to power small devices such as those used for Internet of Things.
Perspectives
Though efficiency of harvesting systems is an important metric, it cannot be claimed as being the main reason for choosing a device over another, I believe, for harvesting technologies, the problem should be addressed in a different way. If the power level harvested is enough to reliably power the systems, it would be interesting and sufficient to the user... This was one of the objectives we wanted to reach in this project. Another important point is that it relies on the use of an engineered surface coupled to existing rectenna (EM energy harvesting systems) such that the cost of deployment of our solution is quite low. One of the perspectives of this work would thus be to test our solutions in real environments where harvesting of EM waves can prove to be essential and in the absence of main energy sources such as solar energy for instance...
Dr Divitha Seetharamdoo
Univ Gustave Eiffel
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Enhancing the power level harvested by rectenna systems based on focusing metasurfaces for ambient environments, Journal of Applied Physics, December 2022, American Institute of Physics,
DOI: 10.1063/5.0122921.
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