Practical Applications of RF Energy Harvesting (Energy Harvesting & Storage USA 2009)

Harry Ostaffe is Director of Marketing and Business Development at Powercast Corporation. He has 20+ years of experience in the fields of data communications and wireless networking, industrial controls, and computing, including previous positions with Ericsson, Marconi, Lucent Technologies, AT&T Network Systems, Bayer, and IBM. Harry holds an MBA from Carnegie Mellon University and a BS in Electrical Engineering from Penn State University.

Creating a power coverage area, Powercast's RF wireless power transmitters automatically power enabled products that come within range for smart, carefree wireless charging. Charging range and rate depend on a device's power consumption; power-hungry products charge best at close range, while the transmitters can power low-power devices such as sensors up to 80 feet (24 meters). The transmitters use the 915-MHz ISM band to send RF energy over the air to Powercast's tiny Powerharvester® receiver chip embedded in products, which converts it to usable direct current (DC) to either directly power batteryless devices, or recharge devices' batteries. The robust technology complies with the FCC's current one-watt power limit for Part 15 deployments in this band, but has potential power capabilities well beyond that to evolve as FCC standards evolve.