Radio frequency energy harvesting (RFEH) and wireless power transmission (WPT) are two emerging alternative energy technologies that have the potential to offer wireless energy delivery in the future. One of the key components of RFEH or WPT system is the receiving antenna. The receiving antenna’s performance has a considerable impact on the power delivery capability of an RFEH or WPT system. This paper provides a well-rounded review of recent advancements of receiving antennas for RFEH and WPT. Antennas discussed in this paper are categorized as low-profile antennas, multi-band antennas, circularly polarized antennas, and array antennas. A number of contemporary antennas from each category are presented, compared, and discussed with particular emphasis on design approach and performance. Current design and fabrication challenges, future development, open research issues of the antennas and visions for RFEH and WPT are also discussed in this review.

A method to steer the beam of aperture-type antennas is presented in this paper. Beam steering is achieved by transforming phase of the antenna near field using a pair of totally passive metasurfaces, which are located just above and parallel to the antenna. They are rotated independently or synchronously around the antenna axis. A prototype, with a peak gain of 19.4 dBi, demonstrated experimentally that the beam of a resonant cavity antenna can be steered to any direction within a large conical region (with an apex angle of 102°), with less than 3-dB gain variation, by simply turning the two metasurfaces without moving the antenna at all. Measured gain variation within a 92° cone is only 1.9 dBi. Contrary to conventional mechanical steering methods, such as moving reflector antennas with multiaxis rotary joints, the 3-D volume occupied by this antenna system does not change during beam steering. This advantage, together with its low profile, makes it a strong contender for space-limited applications where beam steering with active devices is not desirable due to cost, nonlinear distortion, limited power handling, sensitivity to temperature variations, radio frequency losses, or associated heating. This beam steering method using near-field phase transformation can also be applied to other aperture-type antennas and arrays with medium-to-high gains.

Partially reflecting surfaces (PRS) with positive reflection phase gradients are investigated for the design of wideband, low-profile electromagnetic band gap (EBG) resonator antennas. Thin single-dielectric-slab PRSs with printed patterns on both sides are proposed to minimize the PRS thickness and to simplify fabrication. Three such surfaces, each with printed dipoles on both sides, have been designed to obtain different positive reflection phase gradients and reflection magnitude levels in the operating frequency bands. These surfaces, and the EBG resonator antennas formed from them, are analyzed theoretically and experimentally to highlight the design compromises involved and to reveal the relationships between the antenna peak gain, gain bandwidth, the reflection profile (i.e., positive phase gradient and magnitude) of the surface and the relative dimensions of dipoles. A small feed antenna, designed to operate in the cavity field environment, provides good impedance matching (|S₁₁| <; -10 dB) across the operating frequency bands of all three EBG resonator antennas. Experimental results confirm the wideband performance of a simple, low-profile EBG resonator antenna. Its PRS thickness is only 1.6 mm, effective bandwidth is 12.6%, measured peak gain is 16.2 dBi at 11.5 GHz and 3 dB gain bandwidth is 15.7%.

An efficient approach to achieve the shielding effectiveness (SE) by using a frequency-selective surface (FSS) is presented. This FSS, which consists of cross dipoles and rings printed on the opposite sides of a single-layer FR-4 substrate, exhibits a wide, 7.5-GHz stopband to provide simultaneous shielding in both X- and Ka-bands. Experimental results confirm SE of the prototype over an ultra-wide band with more than 20-dB measured attenuation. The design is compact and suitable to provide shielding against the radiation interference caused by license-free and other radio systems.

A dual-band antenna for off- and on-body communications in the 2.45- and 5.8-GHz Industrial, Scientific, and Medical bands is presented. The two radiation characteristics, i.e., patch-like radiation for the off-body link and monopole-like radiation for the on-body link, are achieved by utilizing inherently generated TM₁₁ and TM₀₂ modes of a circular patch antenna. A shorting pin and two arc-shaped slots are employed to tune both modes to the desired operating frequencies. This approach allows a realization of a dual-band dual-mode antenna with a very simple structure, i.e., a single radiator with a simple feed. A further advantage of the proposed antenna is its realization using a silver fabric integrated onto a flexible polydimethylsiloxane substrate that makes it more practical for wearable applications. An experimental investigation of the antenna performance has been carried out in free space and on a semisolid human muscle equivalent phantom, which shows a robust performance against the human body loading effect. When placed on the phantom, the measured bandwidths of 84 and 247 MHz in the 2.45- and 5.8-GHz bands, respectively, are achieved with the corresponding peak gains of 4.16 and 4.34 dBi, indicating a promising candidate for body-centric communications.

This paper presents an efficient particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm developed to design a near-field time delay equalizer metasurface (TDEM) for the purpose of improving directivity and radiation patterns of classical electromagnetic band gap resonator antennas (ERAs). Triple layers of conductive printed patterns in the metasurface were optimized by the PSO algorithm to systematically design the TDEM. Predicted and measured results show a significant improvement in antenna performance including 9.6 dB enhancement in antenna directivity, lower side lobes and higher gain. The measured directivity of the prototype is 21 dBi and 3 dB bandwidth is 11.8%.