Solar panel integrated compact magneto-dielectric loaded sequentially rotated navigation antenna

Abstract

In this paper we present a novel solar panel integrated navigation antenna for solar powered vehicles and devices. The radiator is a compact sequentially rotated patch array loaded with a magneto-dielectric (MD) layer to achieve miniaturization for ease of integration with solar panels. The magneto-dielectric substrate of the proposed antenna consists of MD unit cells created by vertical split ring resonators (SRR). The unit cells are arranged in 11 × 1 fashion beneath each radiator to reduce the dimension of the same to 70% with equivalent performance compared with the respective original patch radiators. An array of such radiators is formed and fed with a sequential feed network comprising T-junction power dividers and delay lines. The proposed antenna is then integrated and tuned with a solar panel and measured. The measured results show that the antenna operates in the L1 GPS band with an impedance bandwidth of 20 MHz centered at 1.575 GHz. The antenna is Right Handed Circularly Polarized (RHCP) with axial ratio bandwidth (ARBW) of 100% due to the sequential rotation. The peak Axial Ratio (AR) values are <3 dB with a peak gain of 7.89 dBic. The proposed solar panel integrated navigation antenna is developed with the view of using it as a multipurpose candidate in a compact shared dimension in solar powered vehicles and devices to provide power to the systems as well as global positioning and navigation of the same.