Achieving Fully Autonomous System-on-Package Designs: An Embedded-on-Package 5G Energy Harvester within 3D Printed Multilayer Flexible Packaging Structures

A novel multilayer flexible packaging fabrication process using only additively manufacturing techniques including inkjet and 3 dimensional (3D) printing is proposed. The 3D printed ramp structures and inkjet printed transmission lines on top of that are suitable for mm-wave inter-layer connections because lower parasitics are induced to the system. Moreover, a system-on-package (SoP) design for backscattering radio-frequency identification (RFID) is proposed. It has to be stressed, that an RF energy harvester operated at 26 GHz which is embedded inside the packaging using additively manufacturing techniques is proposed for the first time. The output voltage of the harvested energy at a distance of 20 cm away from the source is 0.9 V with transmitted equivalent isotropically radiated power (EIRP) equal to 59 dBm. The harvested energy is large enough to power the TS3001 timer for backscattering and can support all energy requirements of the entire SoP design so that the SoP design is fully autonomous and no external board or components are required. The system size can be shrunk to package level and thus paving the way for a multitude of novel miniaturized autonomous modules for wearable, IoT, and 5G applications.