A highly transparent broadside patch antenna.

ABSTRACT The transparent antenna can potentially be combined with solar cells to create multifunctional compact systems. In this article, an optically transparent broadside antenna is presented. Based on a meshed patch antenna which has three horizontal lines and three vertical lines, the antenna has four more lines to increase the bandwidth. The antenna is fed by a top fed for simple structure, and the area of the feed line is much smaller than the one of a side fed. The transparency is much better because of the low ratio of metal area, which can be further reduced without destroying the performance of the antenna. The transparent broadside antenna is studied at 2.5 GHz. On the upper surface of the antenna, the ratio of metal area is 3.2%, and the measured −10 dB impedance bandwidth is close to 60 MHz. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 57:146-149, 2015 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]