Analytic design techniques for MPT antenna arrays

Solar Power Satellites (SPS) represent one of the most interesting technological opportunities to provide large scale, environmentally clean and renewable energy to the Earth [1]-[3]. A fundamental and critical component of SPSs is the Microwave Power Transmission (MPT) system, which is responsible for the delivery of the collected solar power to the ground rectenna [2]. Towards this end, the MPT array must exhibit a narrow main beam width (BW), a high beam efficiency (BE), and a low peak sidelobe level (PSL). Moreover, reduced realization costs and weights are also necessary [3]. To reach these contrasting goals, several design techniques have been investigated including random methods [4] and hybrid deterministic-random approaches [2][3]. On the contrary, well-established design tools based on stochastic optimizers [5][6] are difficult to be employed, due to their high computational costs when dealing with large arrays as those of interest in SPS [3].