**2. History of rectennas**

In the last century, the story of solar rectenna begun when electrical power has been transferred without the use of wires. This technique is called wireless power

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*Solar Rectennas: Analysis and Design*

80% at a single frequency.

*DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.89216*

microwave technology [7].

microwave-powered helicopter.

in-phase.

rectifier.

very low (<1%) [11].

related to this technique.

load via a diode (half-wave rectifier) [1].

transmission (WPT). It is worth to mention that all the rectenna systems conceived at that time were working at microwave frequencies with efficiencies exceeding

• Early experiments on WPT return to the work of Hertz and Tesla which was implemented by exploiting a giant coil and a 3-ft-diameter copper ball to transport the electromagnetic wave with low frequency from one point in space to another one. Later, the idea of power transmission has been developed by researchers particularly after the significant progress that witnessed in

• In 1963, the first rectenna has been invented by Raytheon Co., which was constructed from 28 half-wave dipole antennas. Each one terminated with a bridge rectifier. The overall efficiency of this design was 40%. The rectenna has then been developed by the same company to use as a power source for a

• In 1972, Bailey proposed an idea to use the rectennas to generate electricity from solar power. This idea was based on using a pair of pyramids or cones as a modified dipole, which is similar to rod antennas. The pair is connected to a

• In 1984, arrays of crossed dipoles (**Figure 1**) have been proposed by Marks, where an insulating sheet with fast full-wave rectification is used [9].

• In contrast, Bailey proposed a conventional broadside array antenna, in which the output signal is collected after passing in several dipoles. The latter is used to feed a transmission line in which the signals are transferred to a rectifier. Combined signals are used in that approach to add

• In 1996, Lin et al. achieved the first experimental work [10] that based on the absorption of light by fabricated metallic resonant nanostructures and rectification at light frequency. The device that used this technique uses dipole antenna array that connected in parallel and constructed on a silicon substrate. The device components also include a p-n diode as a half-wave

• In 2003, infrared (IR) rectenna structure-based metal-insulator-metal (MIM) diodes have been designed by Berland [11]. It has been designed using dipoles, operating at 10 μm wavelength. The overall recorded efficiency, however, was

• In 2010, spiral nanoantenna for solar energy has been designed and fabricated to collect energy at mid-IR region [12]. Kotter et al. demonstrated the progress

• In 2011, a monopole antenna has been designed by Midrio et al., where nickel is used as the main material to fabricate the reception of thermal radiation. This type of antenna is overlapping with the ground plane. MIM

A brief historical background on this technique is presented here:
