A Novel X-Band Circular Polarized Reflectarray Element Integrated with Solar Cells

This paper describes designing a novel circular polarized reflectarray (RA) element integrated with solar cells (SC) for satellite communications. Combining solar cells with RA antennas reduces the cost, mass and volume of high gain antennas in satellite communications by fabricating solar antennas (SOLANT). The special type of a SC is investigated analytically in order to obtain the effective EM parameters of a grid electrodes layer of a SC and calculate the Green's function in the spectral domain with the aim of manipulating locations of the surface wave poles. A novel X-band narrow-width RA element is approached to reduce an optical blockage caused by RA elements and obtain a linear phase shift curve, which is crucial for enhancing the bandwidth of a SOLANT. By obtaining a phase shift curve of the scattering element for a modeled and a without modeled SC, applicability of the modeling method for the grid structure of a SC, in designing solar cell antennas, is proved.