Integrated Antenna Currents on a Polycrystalline Silicon Solar Cell

Issues associated with exploiting a multicrystalline silicon solar cell as a ground plane for an Inverted-F Antenna at 2.45 GHz are reported. Current flow on the solar lattice greatly affects the impedance match of a microstrip transmission line positioned above the solar cell. As a result, an antenna designed with a transmission line parallel to the lattice experiences performance degradation when positioned perpendicular to the lattice. A 6 mm wide grounding strip below the transmission line isolates the microstrip sufficiently to achieve acceptable antenna performance with small reductions in solar cell power output. A low profile Inverted-F Antenna with greater gain, wider beamwidth and larger solar cell exposure than previous patch integrations is reported.