Integrated of proximity-coupling high-order modes patch antenna with solar cells for sustainable communication

Abstract

An integration of single-layer proximity-coupling patch antenna and solar cells with bandwidth enhancement and optical energy harvesting is proposed for sustainable communication. For this purpose, many dual-function components are selected for designing the miniaturized solar cell antenna. On the one hand, by greatly affecting the current flow of the rectangular patch, vias and proximity-coupling are introduced to control the resonance modes frequency and matching, respectively, for wideband application, and the radiation performance property can be achieved by high-order mode. On the other hand, vias and proximity-coupling are beneficial to complete direct-current (DC) loop of solar cell and improve compatibility of DC-RF (radio frequency), whereas a high-order mode is beneficial to increase the area of collected light energy. To prove the working principle, fabricated and manufactured solar cell antenna. The measured and simulated results illustrate that the solar cell antenna gain is raised to as high as 9.27 dBi in 4.37 to 5.06 GHz applied to fifth generation communication (5G).