Integration of Solar Power and Microwave WPT Exploiting Transparent Antennas

This paper presents an integrated system for concurrent wireless power transfer and solar powering by means of a unique transparent antenna array which is obtained by an additive printing process on borosilicate glass. The optical transparency of the proposed 2-element microstrip patch antenna array, operating at 2.4 GHz, is achieved by the meshing technique. To ensure sufficient radiation property and optical transmittance, the design with 68.6% theoretical transparency and 6.9 dB simulated antenna gain is chosen. Moreover, the exploitation of the conductive layer as a ground plane of the antenna inside the solar cell has been validated by the measurements while resulting further compactness into the system. The subsequent solar power readings demonstrate that the printed meshed antenna arrays are suitable for integration with solar panels especially in energy cooperative in-space applications.