Wideband Metamaterial Solar Cell Antenna for 5 GHz Wi-Fi Communication

In this paper, a novel design for a wideband integrated photovoltaic (PV) solar cell patch antenna for 5 GHz Wi-Fi communication is presented and discussed. The design consists of a slot loaded patch antenna with an array of complimentary split ring resonators (cSRR) etched in the ground plane. This is then integrated with a solar cell element placed above the patch, where the ground plane of the solar cell acts as a stacked antenna element from an RF perspective. The design is simulated on CST Microwave Studio and fabricated. The results indicate that an impedance bandwidth of 1 GHz is achieved to cover the 5 GHz Wi-Fi band with a gain of between 7.73 dBi and 8.18 dBi across this band. It is also demonstrated that size reduction of up to 25% can be achieved. Moreover, it is noted that using a metamaterial loaded ground plane acts as an impedance transformer, therefore the antenna can be fed directly with a 50 Ω microstrip feed line, hence further reducing the overall size.