RF Energy Harvesting Wireless Communications: RF Environment, Device Hardware and Practical Issues

Yu Luo; Lina Pu; Guodong Wang; Yanxiao Zhao

doi:10.3390/s19133010

RF Energy Harvesting Wireless Communications: RF Environment, Device Hardware and Practical Issues

Sensors (Basel). 2019 Jul 8;19(13):3010. doi: 10.3390/s19133010.

Authors

Yu Luo¹, Lina Pu², Guodong Wang³, Yanxiao Zhao⁴

Affiliations

¹ Electrical and Computer Engineering, Mississippi State University, Mississippi State, MS 39759, USA.
² Computer Science and Computer Engineering, University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg, MS 39406, USA. lina.pu@usm.edu.
³ Computer Science, Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, North Adams, MA 01247, USA.
⁴ Electrical and Computer Engineering, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA 843068, USA.

Abstract

Radio frequency (RF) based wireless power transfer provides an attractive solution to extend the lifetime of power-constrained wireless sensor networks. Through harvesting RF energy from surrounding environments or dedicated energy sources, low-power wireless devices can be self-sustaining and environment-friendly. These features make the RF energy harvesting wireless communication (RF-EHWC) technique attractive to a wide range of applications. The objective of this article is to investigate the latest research activities on the practical RF-EHWC design. The distribution of RF energy in the real environment, the hardware design of RF-EHWC devices and the practical issues in the implementation of RF-EHWC networks are discussed. At the end of this article, we introduce several interesting applications that exploit the RF-EHWC technology to provide smart healthcare services for animals, wirelessly charge the wearable devices, and implement 5G-assisted RF-EHWC.

Keywords: RF Energy harvesting wireless communication (RF-EHWC); RF environment; RF-EHWC hardware; practical issues in RF-EHWC network design.