Alessandra Costanzo

Alessandra Costanzo (A’99–M’02–SM’13) is full professor at the University of Bologna, Italy. Her research activities are dedicated to CAD algorithms for multi-domain co-design and modeling of active nonlinear microwave/RF circuits. Recently she has proposed novel solutions for energy autonomous RF systems based on the wireless power transmission, adopting both far-field and near-field solutions, for several power levels and operating frequencies. She has authored more than 250 scientific publications on peer-reviewed international journals and conferences and several chapter books. Dr. Costanzo is a co-founder of the EU COST Action IC1301 WiPE Wireless Power Transfer for Sustainable Electronics, where she chaired WG1: Far-Field Wireless Power Transfer. She is past-chair of the MTT-26 Committee on Wireless Energy Transfer. Since 2016, she has been the Steering Committee Chair of the new IEEE Journal of Radio Frequency Identification. She is the MTT-S representative and Distinguished Lecturer of the Council on Radio Frequency Identification (CRFID).She has been Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory And Techniques. She is IEEE senior member.

This lecture overviews the available techniques for localizing battery-less devices with high accuracy Then it proposes a novel design approach of an entire RF/microwave energy harvesting link based on the concurrent optimization of the (low) power sources and of the remote of batteryless device, to enable high-accuracy localization. This is obtained by harvesting the higher-order harmonics, generated by the rectifier non-linearity excited by optimized multi-sine excitation signals whose tones are optimized at the circuit level with respect to number, spacing and amplitude distribution. Real-time signal processing techniques can locate such a tag with centimetre level accuracy.

The tag technology is very simple and  can be exploited in several energy-aware applications for  massive environmental monitoring, adopting  eco-compatible  materials.