Abstract
This paper presents an ultra-low-profile copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS) based solar cell integrated antenna with a high form factor. A tiny slot was etched from the solar cell to develop an ultra-low-profile solar-cell-integrated antenna. This tiny slot increases the form factor due to the small clearance area from the solar cell. A ground-radiation antenna design method was applied in which lumped elements were employed inside the tiny slot for antenna operation. Another substrate was used under the solar cell for designing the feeding structure with lumped elements connected to the tiny slot using via holes. A prototype was fabricated and measured to verify the operation of a built-in solar-cell antenna and validate the simulated results. The measured results demonstrate that the solar-cell-integrated antenna covers the entire frequency range of the Industrial Scientific Medical band, from 2.4 to 2.5 GHz, with a maximum gain of 2.79 dBi and radiation efficiency higher than 80% within the impedance bandwidth range. Moreover, the proposed design has an ultra-low-profile structure of only 0.0046 λo, where λo represents the free space wavelength at 2.45 GHz, and a high form factor of 99.1% with no optical blockage. The antenna and solar cell were designed to avoid affecting the performance of each other using the radio-frequency decoupler.
Highlights
This paper presents an ultra-low-profile copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS) based solar cell integrated antenna with a high form factor
The results show that the antenna has a form factor of 99% with excellent performance in terms of antenna characteristics
Loop-type current modes are excited in the ground plane so that the ground plane can be used as a radiator
Summary
This paper presents an ultra-low-profile copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS) based solar cell integrated antenna with a high form factor. The use of solar cells has been increasing for wireless communication systems, especially for IoT and WSN applications where the power grid is not continually a vailable[5]. The overall efficiency and life span of IoT and WSN devices can be increased with solar cells. The photovoltaic cell-integrated antenna can be employed as an on-board power supply for the above-mentioned low-power IoT applications. It can be used with lowpower wireless applications and sensor technologies. A solar-cell-integrated optically transparent antenna array was presented where a meshed structure is used for designing antenna a rrays[25]. The antenna has a reduced form factor due to the resonant slot in the solar cell
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