Ku-band suspended meshed patch antenna integrated with solar cells for remote area applications

A new structure design of a dual-band suspended microstrip meshed patch antenna integrated with a polycrystalline silicon solar cell for Ku-band satellite applications is proposed and presented. This antenna element is a basic building block for a Ku-band meshed array antenna used for two-way satellite internet and TV applications at rural and remote locations. The antenna covers the operating frequency range from 11.7GHz to 12.22 GHz downlink band and from 14.0GHz to 14.5GHz uplink band allocated by the ITU to the Regions 1 and 2. While achieving 500MHz bandwidth across each band, fully covering the Ku-band uplink and downlink frequency bands, the antenna offers a single element gain of 6.05 dBi in the downlink band and 7.61 dBi in the uplink band. The antenna has been fabricated and measured, and good agreement is achieved between the experimental and simulated results. In addition, a good compromise between RF performance and optical transparency is obtained. The overall visible light transmission is found to be approximately 87%. A compact low-profile antenna element is also achieved.

Duke Scholars

Author David R. Smith Electrical and Computer Engineering