A Low-cost Transparent Microwave Energy Harvester For Space Solar Power Transfer

SSP is an expensive technology to deploy due to the costs associated with launching a satellite into geostationary orbit, as well as the cost of such a large ground station and rectennas. The local ground stations necessary to receive and distribute the transmitted power currently employ high-performing but expensive conventional silicon wafer circuit boards. The purpose of this project is to minimize the cost of the ground station to make SSP a more commercially attractive option. This can be accomplished by using inexpensive materials such as copper tape and acrylic to create the rectifying antenna circuit (rectenna). The goal of this project is to simulate and optimize a low-cost and transparent rectenna with decent energy conversion efficiency that can harvest microwave power from space solar power satellites (which may happen in the future). Our team also aims to perform a demonstration of the simulated rectenna with microwave signal sources to show the potential of using such a system for supplying power.