IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL.

8, 2009

693

Meshed Patch Antennas Integrated on Solar Cells

Timothy W. Turpin and Reyhan Baktur
AbstractThis letter presents the study of integrating meshed patch antennas directly onto the solar cells of a small satellite to save valuable surface real estate. The cover glass of the solar cell is used as the substrate for the antennas. The integrated patch antennas are designed to have sufcient optical transparency to ensure the proper functionality of the solar cells. A prototype meshed patch antenna is designed and integrated on after-market solar cells. The antenna has an optical transparency of 93%, and the measurements agree well with the design. Index TermsAntenna radiation patterns, microstrip antennas, solar cells, satellite communication.

I. INTRODUCTION

S SMALL satellites are getting smaller to reduce the payloads in missions, there rises the challenge of how to manage limited satellite surface area to t solar cells, antennas, and space instruments. A traditional satellite system has separate solar cells and antennas. An effective integration of them, however, would save valuable real estate. The main challenge of overlapping the antennas and solar cells is to ensure the compatibility. The antennas should not block the solar cells to function properly, and the effectiveness of antennas should not be signicantly reduced by the presence of solar cells. It should be noted that most small satellites have surface mount solar cells and the solar arrays do not need to be always tracking the sun [Fig. 1(a)]). Therefore, the rise of the temperature of the solar cells and antenna is not the major concern in this letter. The temperature of the sky is used to compute the link budge when the antenna noise temperature is concerned. Also, the communication link between the satellite and the earth is relatively simple compared to the larger satellite system, so a simple phase shifting as needed to the patch antenna is enough to ensure the communication. Although it is feasible to construct transparent antennas from polyester lms with conductive coatings [1], the transparent conductor technology is relatively expensive. Other reported methods of integrating antennas with solar cells include placing a patch antenna under the solar cells [2] and creating radiating slots on the ground plane under the solar cells [3]. In both cases, the solar cells need to be custom-made to ensure the functionality of the antennas. The objective of this work is to present an antenna topology that can be integrated on after-market solar

Fig. 1. Meshed patch antennas. (a) Isometric view of meshed patch antennas integrated on solar panels of a small satellite. (b) Geometry of the meshed patch antenna.

cells. We have found that the meshed patch antennas are costfriendly and effective candidates. The meshed patch antennas have been studied by several researchers [4][8], and Turpin et al. showed that both the transparency and antenna properties can be optimized by rening the mesh width and predicted the feasibility of integrating meshed antennas with solar cells for satellite applications [9]. Following previous work of optimizing the meshed antennas [9], this letter presents the design and measurement results of integrating meshed patch antenna with high optical transparency on top of off the shelf solar cells. II. DESIGN The geometry of the proposed antenna is shown in Fig. 1. The optical transparency of the antenna is dened by the percentage of the see-through area of the patch antenna [9]. It has been shown that to optimize the design for optical transparency and radiation characteristics simultaneously, the line width of the grid needs to be thin, and the number of grid lines parallel to the length of the antenna can be reduced since they do not affect the antenna signicantly [9]. Following the previous study [9], we prototyped two types of antennas as presented in this letter. The simulations of the antennas are performed with Ansofts HFSS. A. Effect of the Substrate on the Antenna Design

Manuscript received March 31, 2009; revised May 18, 2009. First published June 16, 2009; current version published July 21, 2009. This work was supported in part by National Science Foundation Award 0801426. The authors are with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Utah State University, Logan, UT 84322 USA (e-mail: timoturpin@gmail.com; breyhan@engineering.usu.edu). Color versions of one or more of the gures in this letter are available online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org. Digital Object Identier 10.1109/LAWP.2009.2025522

The antenna in this work uses the cover glass of the solar cells as its substrate. In general, a thinner substrate results in a less efcient radiator [10]. In order to determine a reasonable substrate thickness, we examined three types of plastic substrates with different thickness and dielectric properties (relative permittivity of 2.4 at 1 MHz) similar to those of common commercial cover glass. Meshed patch antennas were designed by

1536-1225/$25.00 2009 IEEE

694

IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. 8, 2009

Fig. 2. Effect of the substrate thickness on the peak gain of the meshed patch antenna with varied the line width (q).

Fig. 4. Effect of the conductivity of the peak gain of a meshed patch antenna. Conductivity is varied from 0 to 1 S/m.

Fig. 3. Effect of the substrate thickness on the impedance bandwidth of the meshed patch antenna with varied line width (q ).

Fig. 5. Effect of the conductivity of the peak gain of a meshed patch antenna. Conductivity is varied from 10 to 100 S/m.

using these substrates without integrating on solar cells. The anare tenna gain and the impedance bandwidth plotted as functions of substrate thickness and the line width of the mesh in Figs. 2 and 3. The antennas were excited with 50-Ohm microstrip lines for the purpose of simplicity. In both studies, the optical transparency of the antennas was held constant at 75%, and the length and width of each antenna were 37 and 45 mm, respectively. It is seen from Fig. 2 that when the thickness of the substrate is less than 1 mm, the antenna has a low gain in spite of being optimized through line width ( in Fig. 1) and number of lines. This suggests that in case of off-the-shelf solar cells having a thin cover glass, the meshed patch antennas should be printed on an additional substrate before integrating with the solar cells. When there are various solar cell assemblies to choose, then one needs to choose those with thicker cover glass if additional treatment to increase patch antenna efciency in the presence of substrates is not performed. B. Effect of Solar Cells on the Antenna Design When integrating the meshed patch antenna with solar cells, the effect of solar cells on antenna design needs to be considered. The conguration of the integrated solar cell antenna is as follows. The meshed patch antenna is printed (or attached) on top of the solar cell cover glass. Beneath the cover glass, there

is a layer of photovoltaic cells. The solar cells in our application are gold-plated on the back side, and the gold layer serves as the ground for the integrated antenna. The conductivity of photovoltaic cells may vary from one fabrication process or vendor to another. To study the effect of the conductivity on the performance of antennas, we modeled solar and continuously increased its cell layer as silicon conductivity to examine the performance of the antenna integrated on a substrate on top of the silicon layer and backed with a perfect electric conductor. The conductivity is varied from 0 to 100 S/m. The thickness of the solar cell is taken as 0.16 mm (measured from a commercial solar cell). The examination results are shown in Figs. 47. As seen in Figs. 5 and 7, when the conductivity is above 10 S/m, there is no signicant change in the peak gain and impedance bandwidth of the antenna. The signicant change on antenna properties only occurs when the conductivity of the silicon layer is varied from 0 to 1 S/m. The results in Figs. 4 and 6 suggest that raising the conductivity from 0 to 1 S/m is equivalent to reducing the total thickness of substrates (silicon layer and cover glass) or raising the ground plane of the meshed path antenna. III. MEASUREMENTS To verify the feasibly of integrating the meshed patch antenna with the solar cells, two types of antennas have been fab-

TURPIN AND BAKTUR: MESHED PATCH ANTENNAS INTEGRATED ON SOLAR CELLS

695

Fig. 6. Effect of the conductivity of the impedance bandwidth of a meshed patch antenna. Conductivity is varied from 0 to 1 S/m. Fig. 8. The radiation pattern in the H-plane for a meshed patch antenna with an optical transparency of 61%.

Fig. 7. Effect of the conductivity of the impedance bandwidth of a meshed patch antenna. Conductivity is varied from 10 to 100 S/m.

advanced printing (or surface writing) facility, one can easily print antennas with conductive ink to desired transparency. The resonant frequency of the antenna is measured (using an HP 8510 network analyzer) to be 2.61 GHz. The simulation result is 2.52 GHz, and the discrepancy is mainly due to nonexact value of the dielectric constant of the plastic substrate. It should value we have used from the data sheet is be noted that the for the frequency of 1 MHz, and Carver noted that the dielectric constant is one of the most sensitive parameters in the antenna design [11]. The selected radiation patterns for the simulation and the measured values are presented in Fig. 8. The maximum directivity for the simulation is 7.6 dB, and 8.4 dB for the measured antenna. B. Meshed Patch versus Solid Patch

ricated and integrated with solar cells. The rst one is an antenna screen printed with conductive ink (Creative Materials product number 12446) on a polyethylene terepthalate glycol (PETG) thermoplastic sheet. The plastic substrate has a thickness of 0.762 mm and relative permittivity of 2.4 at 1 MHz and is used to act as the cover glass for the solar cell. The solar cells are assembled on an aluminum plate with a silver-based conductive epoxy (Resin Technology Group, Silver Conductive 402). The plastic and aluminum plate are then fastened together with nylon screws. The second type of antenna is fabricated from off-theshelf electroformed meshed conductor (Unique Wire Weaving Co., BM0020-03-N). The antenna is attached to the plastic substrate and integrated with solar cells as described above for the printed meshed antenna. A. Measured Results The screen printed antenna has a length and width of 35.0 and 40.8 mm, respectively, and a line width of 0.5 mm. The transparency of the antenna is 61%. It can be challenging to screen print a highly transparent (such as 90%) antenna with precision, but the design method of a 90% transparent antenna is the same as those of 61% transparent antenna. With a more

To verify the effect of meshing on the antenna performance and to normalize the meshed patch antenna to a reference, a solid patch antenna is fabricated from the same conductive ink and tuned to resonate at the same frequency as the meshed patch antenna. The solid patch antenna also has a width of 40.8 mm, but the length of the solid patch is 38.9 mm, so the two types of antenna are resonant at the same frequency. The measured radiation patterns are shown in Fig. 9. As can be seen, the meshing of the patch does not change the shape of the radiation pattern, and the result agrees with Clasens study [6]. Additionally, there is only minimal change in the directivity. The solid patch has a directivity of 8.6 dB, and the meshed patch antenna has a directivity of 8.4 dB. C. Antenna Made From Electroformed Meshed Conductor As an alternative to printing antennas on the substrate, an off-the-shelf meshed conductor is used to design the antenna. The meshed conductor is electroformed and has an optical transparency of 93%. The radiation pattern of this antenna compared with the antenna fabricated from the conductive ink is shown in Fig. 10. The antenna has a maximum directivity of 8.2 dB in comparison to 8.4. The decrease in the directivity is expected

696

IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. 8, 2009

from conductive ink, and the antenna fabricated from the electroformed mesh). It is found that, over all, meshing lowers the cross-polarization level, but no signicant decrease is noted for the antenna with 61% transparency comparing with the solid patch antenna. The average cross-polarization level for both the dB, solid antenna and the 61% antenna are lower than while the antenna fabricated from the electroformed mesh has a dB. cross-polarization level of lower than IV. CONCLUSION The letter presents the feasibility study of integrating optically transparent meshed patch antenna on top of off-the-shelf solar cells. To enable the proper functioning of the solar cells, the transparency of the antenna is required to be higher than 90%, and we found that it is feasible to design such an antenna from two methods (screen print with conductive ink and design from electroformed meshed conductors). The meshing of the patch antenna does not hinder the radiation pattern, and with the correct geometry of the mesh, the performance of the antenna is comparable to that of a solid patch antenna. It is also shown that the addition of the solar cell layer has minimal effect on the performance of the antenna. In order to have an effective antenna, there is a minimum requirement on the thickness of the solar cell cover glass. Either a cover glass with sufcient thickness has to be chosen, or the antenna needs to be printed on an additional layer, then integrated on the solar cell. REFERENCES
[1] R. N. Simons and R. Q. Lee, Feasibility study of optically transparent microstrip patch antenna, NASA, Tech. Memorandum 107434. [2] S. Vaccaro, P. Torres, J. R. Mosig, A. Shah, J. F. Zurcher, A. K. Skrivervik, F. Gardiol, P. de Maagt, and L. Gerlach, Integrated solar panel antennas, Electron. Lett., vol. 36, no. 5, pp. 390391, Mar. 2000. [3] S. Vaccaro, P. Torres, J. R. Mosig, A. Shah, J. F. Zurcher, A. K. Skrivervik, F. Gardiol, P. de Maagt, and L. Gerlach, Stainless steel slot antenna with integrated solar cells, Electron. Lett., vol. 36, no. 25, pp. 20592060, Dec. 2000. [4] K. Oshima, N. Kidera, K. Niwano, K. Ikawa, R. Sonoda, and S. Kawasaki, Use of a transparent conductive thin-lm on a glass substrate in active integrated antenna array with double strong coupling, in Proc. IEEE MTT-S Dig., 2002, pp. 15691572. [5] M.-S. Wu and K. Ito, Basic study on see-through microstrip antennas constructed on a window glass, in Proc. IEEE AP-S Int. Symp., 1992, pp. 499502. [6] G. Clasen and R. J. Langley, Meshed patch antenna integrated into car windscreen, Electron. Lett., vol. 36, no. 9, pp. 781782, Apr. 2000. [7] G. Clasen and R. Langley, Meshed patch antennas, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 52, no. 6, pp. 14121416, Jun. 2004. [8] G. Clasen and R. J. Langley, Gridded circular patch antennas, Microw. Opt. Technol. Lett., vol. 21, pp. 311313, Jul. 1999. [9] T. W. Turpin and R. Baktur, See-through microstrip antennas and their optimization, presented at the Gen. Assemb. Int. Union Radio Sci., Chicago, IL, Aug. 2008. [10] R. Bancroft, Microstrip and Printed Antenna Design. Atlanta, GA: Noble, 2004, pp. 5355. [11] K. R. Carver and J. W. Mink, Microstrip antenna technology, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. AP-29, no. 1, pp. 224, Jan. 1981.

Fig. 9. The radiation pattern in the H-plane for a meshed patch antenna with an optical transparency of 61% and a solid patch antenna.

Fig. 10. The radiation pattern in the H-plane for two meshed patch antenna with an optical transparency of 61% and 93%. The solid line for the 93% optically transparent antenna constructed from a wire mesh. The dashed line is for the 61% optically transparency antenna constructed from conductive ink.

because the electroformed mesh has a higher transparency than the printed antenna. D. Cross Polarization The cross-polarization level is measured for all three antennas (solid patch from conductive ink, screen printed mashed patch