Executive Summary : | In the era of 5G/6G communication networks, the rapid rate of communication and information exchange through electronic devices is crucial. Conventional methods of charging IoT devices with batteries or replacing faulty ones have become cumbersome. This project aims to provide energy to these devices through wireless power transfer and energy harvesting, paving the way for wireless charging in electric vehicles and avoiding battery replacement for future communication applications. The project will use metasurfaces, artificially engineered materials, to design structures for wireless power transfer (WPT) and wireless energy harvesting (WEH). The focus will be on radiative power transfer, where power is transmitted in the far field region of the transmitting source for long-distance communication. Metasurfaces with features like polarization insensitivity and angular stability contribute to improved power conversion efficiency. Beam forming and reflecting metasurfaces with multi-feed and multi-focus designs will be explored for WPT. Metasurfaces with polarization insensitivity/multiband/wideband/wide angular stability characteristics will be explored for energy harvesters. In WEH, a feed network will be designed below the metasurface layer to transfer RF energy captured by the metasurface to the load, and a rectifier will be designed to covert the captured RF power to DC signals. Metasurfaces also reduce the overall size of the structure compared to conventional rectenna by providing impedance matching to free space. The design of WEH will consist of metasurface + IMN, feed network, and rectifier circuit. |