Investigation on the Human Body as A Monopole Antenna for Energy Harvesting

Energy harvesting from the ambient wireless electromagnetic energy has grown recently in the field of self-sustained and autonomous sensor networks. This technique needs to design a dedicated antenna to receive ambient power within the corresponding frequency band, which increases the designing difficulty and complexity of the system in most degrees. Besides, the available power in the low-frequency bands near 100 MHz is a good power source for energy harvesting. But there is less energy harvesting investigation focused on this frequency band due to the requirement of large size antenna. In this paper, we analyze the feasibility of using the human body as a monopole antenna for energy harvesting in the frequency range of 20-120 MHz. A simulation platform based on HFSS software is built to optimize the performance of the human body antenna. Based on the optimum design of human body antenna, actual measurements in a general electromagnetic environment are carried out to measure the received power. The results showed that there are about -51dBm power and -48.67dBm power can be received at a frequency of 57.72 MHz and frequency band of 20 MHz-120 MHz respectively.