A Wideband, Quasi-Isotropic, Kilometer-Range FM Energy Harvester for Perpetual IoT

Abstract

Unlike conventional energy harvesters that are tuned to individual frequencies and are directional, the proposed wideband (23% fractional bandwidth), omnidirectional system harvests from all FM towers in vicinity. Hence, it does not require each sensor node to be carefully aligned to any one source and makes itself suited for mass-deployment applications such as precision agriculture and structural health monitoring. It harvests as much as 923 μ W on a rooftop at 1.54 km from an FM tower while retaining omnidirectionality partly thanks to the proposed antenna, which has a wider bandwidth and a higher measured gain (2.0 dBi) than the commercial reference wideband antenna. It achieves competitive efficiency (56%) and sensitivity (-17 dBm) while retaining wideband operation rather than being specifically optimized to individual frequencies. The system (fabricated on low-cost FR4) harvested outside ambient FM energy indoors at the same 1.54-km location to power a wireless sensor node without needing to shut down periodically. ? 2001-2012 IEEE.