A Circularly Polarized 2.4 GHz Slot Phased Array Antenna Integrated With Solar Cells

In this paper, a circularly polarized solar cell slot phased array antenna is proposed. The antenna unit consists of solar cells, four L-shaped slots, a 90°-delay rotational feeding power divider, an artificial magnetic conductor (AMC) ground, and an SMA connector. This L-shaped slot not only reduces the unit spacing of the antenna for wide-angle beam scanning, but also ensures the connectivity of the electrode wires of the solar cells. Four L-shaped slots synthesize the circular polarization, and sixteen 2×2 rotating feeding subarrays are employed to improve the axial ratio (AR) of the solar cell antenna array. The petal-shaped AMC ground is used to reduce the profile and enhance the forward radiation of the antenna array. The proposed solar cell phased array antenna shows a large beam scanning angle of ±60° at 2.35-2.45 GHz, with active voltage standing wave ratio (AVSWR) less than 2. It also shows a high radiation efficiency of 80.9% at 2.4 GHz, and a high solar cell coverage ratio of 80.5% with 100% insolation. This solar cell phased array antenna with a height of 0.12λ<sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">0</sub> (λ<sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">0</sub> is the free-space wavelength at 2.4 GHz) can be used for satellite mobile ground terminal communication.