Comparison of Different Solar Cell-Antenna Integration Designs on a Thin Film Space-Based Solar Power Station

Practical space-based energy harvesting requires a large structure to make the microwave power transferring beam localized to a small area on Earth. A thin foldable membrane satellite is proposed to reduce the cost of building this structure. The membrane is formed by the solar cell and antenna array, but since they exist on the same plane, the solar cell area is reduced to accommodate antennas. Power lost due to pointing is also expected once the membrane is misaligned with the sunlight or with the beaming direction towards the Earth. Antenna designs incorporating optically invisible conductors, or the use of slot antennas were proposed to integrate with solar cells when area is limited. We examined their performance in terms of wireless power transfer efficiency in the context of a thin membrane and compared their mass per area to get an idea of the relative cost of launching the designs.