Optically transparent antennas for small satellites

In this thesis the placement of antennas on a small satellite's solar cell is studied. The place-ment of antennas is carefully investigated by minimizing the total solar cell's power harvesting area covered by a patch antenna. Transparent antennas can potentially improve the usage of the covered area by allowing a percentage of incident solar light through. This work explores the feasibility of antennas made out of transparent oxides (TCOs) and co-planar electromagnetically coupled feeds that can be placed on solar cells. TCOs are reviewed and simpli ed in order to better understand material properties on antenna design. Skin depth e ffects are studied in detail and an empirical equation is introduced to better model skin e ffects resultant from thin film TCO depositions. In the second part of the thesis coupled feeds for see-through meshed antennas are studied. Properties such as antenna gain, co-polarization, efficiency and cross-polarization are discussed.