Assessment of economic factors affecting the satellite power system. Volume 2: The systems implications of rectenna siting issues

The feasibility was evaluated of finding potential sites for Solar Power Satellite (SPS) receiving antennas (rectennas) in the continental United States, in sufficient numbers to permit the SPS to make a major contribution to U.S. generating facilities, and to give statistical validity to an assessment of the characteristics of such sites and their implications for the design of the SPS system. It is found that the cost-optimum power output of the SPS does not depend on the particular value assigned to the cost per unit area of a rectenna and its site, as long as it is independent of rectenna area. Many characteristics of the sites chosen affect the optimum design of the rectenna itself

Survey and documentation of emerging technologies for the Satellite Power System (SPS)

The genesis of the solar power satellite (SPS) concept is reviewed historically and the original assumptions and guidelines which led to development of the SPS reference system design concept are discussed. Some guidelines are applicable to almost any SPS design, but others can be changed, leading to new and perhaps preferable systems. In order to stimulate new SPS concepts and to facilitate comparative assessment of emerging SPS technologies, one useful approach is to break the overall system into functional parts. The system functions which must be performed by any SPS concept and the interrelations between them are discussed and a systematic framework is presented for assessing the wide variety of system concepts and subsystem technologies which have been proposed. About 80 alternative SPS technologies are reviewed

A Novel Transparent UWB Antenna for Photovoltaic Solar Panel Integration and RF Energy Harvesting

A novel transparent ultra-wideband antenna for photovoltaic solar-panel integration and RF energy harvesting is proposed in this paper. Since the approval by the Federal Communications Committee (FCC) in 2002, much research has been undertaken on UWB technology, especially for wireless communications. However, in the last decade, UWB has also been proposed as a power harvester. In this paper, a transparent cone-top-tapered slot antenna covering the frequency range from 2.2 to 12.1 GHz is designed and fabricated to provide UWB communications whilst integrated onto solar panels as well as harvest electromagnetic waves from free space and convert them into electrical energy. The antenna when sandwiched between an a-Si solar panel and glass is able to demonstrate a quasi omni-directional pattern that is characteristic of a UWB. The antenna when connected to a 2.55-GHz rectifier is able to produce 18-mV dc in free space and 4.4-mV dc on glass for an input power of 10 dBm at a distance of 5 cm. Although the antenna presented in this paper is a UWB antenna, only an operating range of 2.49 to 2.58 GHz for power scavenging is possible due to the limitation of the narrowband rectifier used for the study

Integration of SPS with utility system networks

The integration of Satellite Power System (SPS) power in electric utility power systems is discussed. Specifically, the nature of the power output variations from the spacecraft to the rectenna, the operational characteristics of the rectenna power, and the impacts on the electric utility system from utilizing SPS power to serve part of the system load are treated. It is concluded that if RF beam control is an acceptable method for power control, and that the site distribution of SPS rectennas do not cause a very high local penetration (40 to 50%), SPS may be integrated into electric utility system with a few negative impacts. Increased regulating duty on the conventional generation, and a potential impact on system reliability for SPS penetration in excess of about 25% appear to be two areas of concern

Rectenna session: Micro aspects

Two micro aspects of the rectenna design are addressed: evaluation of the degradation in net rectenna RF to DC conversion efficiency due to power density variations across the rectenna (power combining analysis) and design of Yagi-Uda receiving elements to reduce rectenna cost by decreasing the number of conversion circuits (directional receiving elements). The first of these micro aspects involves resolving a fundamental question of efficiency potential with a rectenna, while the second involves a design modification with a large potential cost saving

Radiated microwave power transmission system efficiency measurements

The measured and calculated results from determining the operating efficiencies of a laboratory version of a system for transporting electric power from one point to another via a wireless free space radiated microwave beam are reported. The system's overall end-to-end efficiency as well as intermediated conversion efficiencies were measured. The maximum achieved end-to-end dc-to-ac system efficiency was 54.18% with a probable error of + or - 0.94%. The dc-to-RF conversion efficiency was measured to be 68.87% + or - 1.0% and the RF-to-dc conversion efficiency was 78.67 + or - 1.1%. Under these conditions a dc power of 495.62 + or - 3.57 W was received with a free space transmitter antenna receiver antenna separation of 170.2 cm (67 in)

Millimeter-wave/infrared rectenna development at Georgia Tech

The key design issues of the Millimeter Wave/Infrared (MMW/IR) monolithic rectenna have been resolved. The work at Georgia Tech in the last year has focused on increasing the power received by the physically small MMW rectennas in order to increase the rectification efficiency. The solution to this problem is to place a focusing element on the back side of the substrate. The size of the focusing element can be adjusted to help maintain the optimum input power density not only for different power densities called for in various mission scenarios, but also for the nonuniform power density profile of a narrow EM-beam

Waveform design for Wireless Power Transfer

Far-field Wireless Power Transfer (WPT) has attracted significant attention in recent years. Despite the rapid progress, the emphasis of the research community in the last decade has remained largely concentrated on improving the design of energy harvester (so-called rectenna) and has left aside the effect of transmitter design. In this paper, we study the design of transmit waveform so as to enhance the dc power at the output of the rectenna. We derive a tractable model of the nonlinearity of the rectenna and compare with a linear model conventionally used in the literature. We then use those models to design novel multisine waveforms that are adaptive to the channel state information (CSI). Interestingly, while the linear model favours narrowband transmission with all the power allocated to a single frequency, the nonlinear model favours a power allocation over multiple frequencies. Through realistic simulations, waveforms designed based on the nonlinear model are shown to provide significant gains (in terms of harvested dc power) over those designed based on the linear model and over nonadaptive waveforms. We also compute analytically the theoretical scaling laws of the harvested energy for various waveforms as a function of the number of sinewaves and transmit antennas. Those scaling laws highlight the benefits of CSI knowledge at the transmitter in WPT and of a WPT design based on a nonlinear rectenna model over a linear model. Results also motivate the study of a promising architecture relying on large-scale multisine multiantenna waveforms for WPT. As a final note, results stress the importance of modeling and accounting for the nonlinearity of the rectenna in any system design involving wireless power