Studying the Feasibility of Energy Harvesting from Broadcast RF Station for WSN

In this paper, we discuss the feasibility of extracting energy from broadcast RF signals, mainly from TV or radio emissions. This method would avoid the dedicated RF energy suppliers that use some wireless sensor networks, which would be especially useful in ultra-low power stand-alone nodes (outdoor). The energy flow is uninterrupted and a capacitor can be slowly charged by means of a rectifier and voltage multiplier. An average current up to 8 muA has been obtained from a 1.584 MHz amplitude modulated radio signal. Preliminary results indicate that the capacitor could power a pulsed-load with a very low duty cycle.