A Multi-Band Antenna with an Aesthetic Design for Ambient RF Energy Harvesting

This paper presents a novel multi-band patch antenna with an aesthetic design for ambient RF energy harvesting applications. A new approach is applied to create antenna elements with unique shapes on a 3D-printed substrate for easy antenna integration into different objects. The measured results show that the proposed antenna provides three frequency ranges over which the reflection coefficient magnitude is below -10 dB of 1.71-1.80 GHz, 2.33–2.60 GHz, and 3.3-3.6 GHz. The antenna radiation patterns show that the antenna enables multi-direction harvesting from unknown RF sources. Moreover, the proposed antenna has been embedded in a 3D-printed flower pot. The results show that the embedded antenna has a robust input impedance when a flower is placed in the flower pot close to the antenna ground plane. These demonstrated properties of the proposed novel antenna with an aesthetic design make it an appropriate candidate for incorporation into next-generation IoT self-powered devices.