Researchers harvest energy from radio waves to power wearable devices

An international team of researchers, led by Huanyu "Larry" Cheng, Dorothy Quiggle Career Development Professor in the Penn State Department of Engineering Science and Mechanics, has developed a way to harvest energy from radio waves to power wearable devices. The researchers developed a stretchable wideband dipole antenna system capable of wirelessly transmitting data that is collected from health-monitoring sensors.

The system consists of two stretchable metal antennas integrated onto conductive graphene material with a metal coating. The wideband design of the system allows it to retain its frequency functions even when stretched, bent and twisted. This system is then connected to a stretchable rectifying circuit, creating a rectified antenna, or "rectenna," capable of converting energy from electromagnetic waves into electricity. This electricity that can be used to power wireless devices or to charge energy storage devices, such as batteries and supercapacitors. This rectenna can convert radio, or electromagnetic, waves from the ambient environment into energy to power the sensing modules on the device, which track temperature, hydration and pulse oxygen level.

The researchers published their method inMaterials Today Physics.

https://techxplore.com/news/2021-03-harvest-energy-radio-power-wearable.html