In this paper, a new design of a planar rectenna system and its application to a wake-up receiver operating for incoming signal with a specified frequency are proposed for low-power sensor system applications. The planar and integrable rectenna system is designed with DGSs(Defected Ground Structures) at 2.4 GHz. The DGSs reject harmonic components of 4.8 and 7.2 GHz and eliminate 2.4 GHz fundamental frequency for DC-path filtering. The rectenna system has been evaluated for the conversion output voltages, and applied to the switching of a power supply at the low-power sensor receivers. The proposed system has been evaluated for the wake-up performance by testing a lownoise amplifier operation. From the experimental results, the proposed receiver system presents excellent operation performances.