Abstract: The objective is to find the amount of ambient RF energy available in a given location to power battery free products. This was achieved by designing and building a novel, handheld, low cost, system to capture the ambient RF signal (such as cellular signals, TV broadcasting waves, and WiFi signals), convert to DC power level that can be harvested at any given location, and visually GeoMap it using the GPS coordinates. The constructed hardware portion of the system consists of the Arduino microcontroller, the RF Power Detector chip, wideband antenna, and Bluetooth Module. The Arduino is programmed to capture the RF Power data from the RF Power Detector chip and send it to the Mobile Application. The developed Android App is able to communicate with the Arduino via Bluetooth and receive the captured RF Power data from it. The data is uploaded to the web server along with GPS coordinates. The created website stores the uploaded data from the app to the online database.

Abstract: Recent research efforts in ambient RF energy harvesting are being focused on designing ultra-low power battery free products and maximizing the efficiency of RF harvesting circuits. But the vital information that researchers lack in is how much RF energy is present at a given geographical location and whether their product will be getting enough power to operate at that specific area of usage. The objective is to find the amount of ambient RF energy available in a given location to power battery free products. This was achieved by designing and building a novel, handheld, low cost, system to capture the ambient RF signal (such as cellular signals, TV broadcasting waves, and WiFi signals), convert to DC power level that can be harvested at any given location, and visually GeoMap it using the GPS coordinates. The constructed hardware portion of the system consists of the Arduino microcontroller, the RF Power Detector chip, wideband antenna, and Bluetooth Module.