Design of a microwave power transmission demonstration system for space solar power station

A microwave power transmission (MPT) demonstration system was assembled to comprehensively emulate the operating mode of MPT in space solar power station (SSPS). Based on solid power amplifier and phased antenna array, this system comprised three main parts, that is, microwave power transmitting subsystem, microwave power rectenna subsystem, and power beam steering subsystem. It was employed to validate the constraint relationship between beam collection efficiency and the sizes of transmitting antenna and rectenna, transmission distance, operation frequency. High efficiency rectifying and accurate beam steering were also demonstrated. The power transmitting antenna was composed of 64 sub-arrays of patch antennas, with the dimension of 1.2 × 1.2 m². In addition, the rectenna array was constructed as a corner truncated square with the side length of 2 m. Its design was based on the concept of perfectly matched layer and integrated rectifying surface. The power beam steering subsystem, implemented with software retrodirective idea, pointed the microwave beam to the rectenna according to the direction of arrival of the pilot signal. The experimental MPT system, operating at 5.8 GHz, transmitted 910 W microwave power across 30 m distance. At the power receiving end, the optimum rectenna conversion efficiency of 49.3% was obtained. With aid of the beam steering subsystem, beam granularity, and beam steering accuracy of 0.23 and 0.18° were achieved, respectively. The compositive experiment verified all function as power transmitting, receiving, rectifying, and steering of MPT system. MPT technology is thus driven toward engineering application, and will ultimately space solar power exploration.