Design techniques for power harvesting of passive wireless microsensors

This paper presents an overview of the state-of-the-art of the design techniques of voltage multipliers used for far-field power harvesting of wireless microsensors. The evolution of each voltage multiplier is investigated. The advantages and design constraints of the voltage multipliers are investigated and compared. Techniques that improve the power efficiency of voltage multipliers by increasing the voltage of the input signal of the multipliers without increasing the emission power of base stations and reducing the voltage loss of rectifying devices of the multipliers are examined in detailed. The performace of recently reported voltage multipliers for passive UHF microsensors and transpondes is compared.