Duration: 24 months
The Project ELECTRON aims at proposing an innovative concept for the transmitting (TX) antenna of a microwave power transmission (MPT) system to be used for future on-orbit demonstrators of Space-Based Solar Power (SBSP) satellites. More generally, the proposed concept is applicable in any power beaming application either in space or on ground, from space exploration to the powering of remote communities or unmanned airships, and post-disaster humanitarian aid. The development of antenna technology has been always driven by the applications, so far mainly wireless communications and radar/sensing where the signal information content is fundamental. In a MPT system, the key goal is the end-to-end efficiency of the wireless power transmission, evaluated as the ratio between the received power at the output of the receiving (RX) antenna and that radiated by the transmitting antenna, where the signal content has no meaning. Recent insights indicated that pulsed waveforms, unlike single-carrier continuous-waves, have the potential to improve the conversion of radio frequency (RF) energy into direct current (DC) energy at the output of the array elements of the RX rectenna. Timed antenna array (TAA) is the time-domain counterpart of phased array and has been originally conceived to facilitate the transmission of pulses as the radiating elements are excited by wideband signals instead of narrowband ones. In this framework, this Project will research the fundamentals of pulsed antennas towards the development of new TAA for MPT/SBSP systems, including the analysis of the pulsed wave propagation through the atmosphere. The activity is aimed to the theoretical study of the optimal waveform and the design of the TAA architecture able to comprise hundreds of millions of elements, thus requiring a modular architecture, for maximizing the transmission efficiency. A careful numerical analysis, including full-wave simulations, will complete the theoretical study and derivations.
