A triband short-circuited suspended solar patch antenna

In this paper, a triband low-profile short-circuited suspended patch antenna combined with a polycrystalline silicon solar cell working as a radiating patch element is proposed for 2.3/2.5/2.8/3.3/3.5 GHz band WiMAX and 2.4 GHz band WLAN networks. The fabricated multifunctional solar antenna offers measured impedance bandwidths of 230, 130 and 280 MHz at the resonance frequencies of 2.4, 2.8 and 3.45 GHz with measured gains of 7.4, 7.8 and 7.6 dBi respectively. The proposed solar antenna generates a measured open circuit voltage of 0.595 V with a short circuit current of 602 mA as a result of the photovoltaic effect, operating with a calculated solar efficiency of 13.22% and providing a DC power output of 0.238 W.