Capturing Surface Electromagnetic Energy into a DC through Single-Conductor Transmission Line at Microwave Frequencies

This communication demonstrates the feasibility of rectifying microwave energy through one-wire with no earth return. In the proposed transmission system, a novel coaxial to Goubau line transition (referred thereafter as coaxial/G-line transition) was employed to transfer microwave power from TEM modes in a coaxial line to TM modes in a Goubau line. The captured signal at the receiving end of the Goubau line can be either directly used for communication or rectified into a DC. The proposed system can be used as an emergency source of power supply for cable cars, escalators and window cleaning gondolas in the event of accidents. According to our experimental results, a 0 dBm microwave signal can be transmitted through a single conductor of 13 cm in length with an insertion loss of less than 3 dB. When the input power was raised to 15 dBm, the electromagnetic energy at the receiving end can be rectified at 1.36 GHz into a DC with the efficiency at approximately 12.7%.