Development of Microstrip Patch Antenna Integrated on Solar Cell Based Artificial Magnetic Conductor Surface for Green Wireless Applications

In this paper, a novel design for a plurality of wide band microstrip rectangular patch antenna on solar cell integrated Artificial Magnetic Conductor (AMC) surface for Wireless communication is proposed and presented. Here, the general reflection characteristic from an AMC surface with rectangular unit cells as a reflector and effect on integration of the solar cell with the proposed antenna is validated. The designed AMC plane consists of 6 × 6 patches with both copper ground plane and also solar cell ground plane, be placed beneath the rectangular microstrip patch antenna maintaining an air gap between the structures, which achieves unidirectional radiation, and also enhance operating bandwidth simultaneously. The amorphous silicon solar cell in the module is used as both a photovoltaic generator and also from an RF perspective; act as ground plane for the AMC plane. The effectiveness of the proposed antenna structure is confirmed by high-frequency structure simulator (HFSS) tool for 3D full wave electromagnetic field simulation and measurement. The fabricated patch antenna on AMC plane with copper ground plane offers 2.12 GHz - 2.48 GHz band and the same radiating patch on AMC plane with solar cell ground plane offers 2.16 GHz - 3.32 GHz with enhanced impedance bandwidth, effective return loss, good VSWR and radiation pattern characteristics for green WLAN applications.