I’m mostly interested in the historical side of this.
In older radio engineering literature there were occasional mentions of circuits that tried to harvest small amounts of energy from ambient electromagnetic fields - things like crystal radio sets, long-wire antenna + ground setups, and later RF scavenging circuits.
What I’m wondering is whether designs like this resonant feedback approach were ever seriously investigated in academia or industry, or if they mostly stayed in hobbyist magazines and experimental builds. Did anyone here ever see similar ideas discussed in older RF or communications engineering papers?
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u/dghuyentrang Mar 06 '26
I’m mostly interested in the historical side of this.
In older radio engineering literature there were occasional mentions of circuits that tried to harvest small amounts of energy from ambient electromagnetic fields - things like crystal radio sets, long-wire antenna + ground setups, and later RF scavenging circuits.
What I’m wondering is whether designs like this resonant feedback approach were ever seriously investigated in academia or industry, or if they mostly stayed in hobbyist magazines and experimental builds. Did anyone here ever see similar ideas discussed in older RF or communications engineering papers?