Circularly Polarized Microstrip Slot Phased Array Antenna Integrated with Solar Cells

In this paper, a circularly polarized microstrip slot phased array antenna integrated with solar cells is proposed. The antenna is realized by sequentially rotating four L-shaped slots antenna units for left-hand circularly polarized radiation, and a four-way Wilkinson power divider is used for the feeding network to achieve the equal amplitude excitation with phase delay of 90 degrees one by one. The overall size of the designed antenna is 62 mmx 62 mmx 27.58 mm (0.496 lambda ox 0.496 lambda ox 0.22 lambda o, at 2.4 GHz), and the solar cells occupy 73% of the area of the antenna. The VSWR bandwidth of the antenna unit is 2.0-3.85 GHz with VSWR < 2, and the 3dB axial ratio bandwidth is 2.16-3.24 GHz. The simulation results of the 2x8 antenna array show that it can realize a beam scanning of +/- 50 degrees, this solar cell antenna can be used for satellite communication.