Optical Transparent Broadband Antenna Array Integrated With Polycrystalline Silicon Solar Cells

Abstract

This letter presents a 4 × 4 transparent broadband single-arm spiral antenna array integrated with polycrystalline silicon solar cells (PSSCs). For the sake of appraising the antenna, a kind of multilayer structure is established, enabling the PSSCs and single-arm spiral antenna array to combine perfectly, which has little influence on antenna performance and solar cell efficiency. The employment of the transparent substrate and meshed antenna increases the optical transparency to 92%. By adopting this kind of structure, the antenna array can achieve a working bandwidth of 1.26–3.2 GHz (2.54:1) and the highest gain of 19.4 dBi. This circularly polarized antenna array can realize wide working bandwidth, high gain, and high optical transparency while being well integrated with solar cells.