A W-Band Rectenna Using On-Chip CMOS Switching Rectifier and On-PCB Tapered Slot Antenna Achieving 25% Effective-Power-Conversion Efficiency for Wireless Power Transfer

This paper presents a W-band rectenna unit, which incorporates an optimized CMOS switching rectifier and a print tapered slot antenna. Based on the analysis of the operation principle of the switching rectifier, this paper proposes an optimized structure of the switching rectifier and the body-diode effect (BDE) to improve reliability and power conversion efficiency (PCE). Besides, a high-gain W-band antipodal linearly tapered slot antenna (ALTSA) is implemented on PCB to improve the overall efficiency. The switching rectifier achieves a peak PCE of 45.8% at 94 GHz with improved reliability. The overall PCE of the rectenna unit up to 25% is achieved with 5.6 mW output dc power under 90 mW/cm² incident power density. The proposed rectifier and rectenna achieve the highest PCE among recently reported W-band rectifiers and rectennas with different technologies.