3D Printed Bifunctional Triple-Band Heatsink Antenna for RF and Thermal Energy Harvesting

Abstract

Future IoT environment requires billions of wireless sensor nodes where energy consumption of these devices will be a concern. This problem can be solved by harvesting energy from ambient environment to power these sensor nodes. Ambient RF and thermal energy have a great potential, as both of them are available in most of the places. When combining these two energy harvesters into one module, optimized design is required. This work presents a bifunctional heatsink antenna, which serves as a part of a triple-band RF energy harvester (GSM900, GSM1800 and 3G) and also acts as a heatsink which boosts the performance of the thermal energy harvester. The antenna has been designed by using Ansys HFSS and Solidworks in parallel for optimal RF and thermal performances. Average 3dB of gain boost for antenna performance and 3 times more heat transfer is achieved when heatsink antenna is used compared to flat antenna.