Design of High-Power Microwave Rectifier With Wide Temperature Range

This letter presents a high-power GaN microwave rectifier with a wide operating temperature range based on temperature-dependent analytical method. This analytical method integrates modified thermionic emission model, variable-range hopping (VRH) model and an extended rectification model. Within the framework of rectification model, two analytical expressions are derived for the leakage losses, which are attributed to the leakage current characterized by the VRH model. This derivation enables the accurate calculation of the peak leakage current and leakage loss of rectifiers at variable temperatures, which are essential for ensuring rectifier thermal stability and improving conversion efficiency. To verify the analytical method, a customized GaN Schottky barrier diode (SBD) and a 5.8 GHz rectifier with a load resistance of <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$100~\Omega $</tex-math> </inline-formula> are designed. Measurements show that at the input power of 29dBm, the efficiency remains above 73% in the temperature range of <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$25~^{\circ }$</tex-math> </inline-formula>C–<inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$200~^{\circ }$</tex-math> </inline-formula>C, with a maximum efficiency of 79.4%.