Wide looking angle transparent antenna with improved efficiency and invisibility

Abstract

In this thesis, we propose a wide-looking angle transparent antenna with improved efficiency and Invisibility. Conventional transparent antennas typically suffer from the challenge of a trade-off between transparency and sheet resistance, making it difficult to achieve both high efficiency and transparency simultaneously. Furthermore, they suffer from a degradation of transparency at a wide looking angle. In addition, no matter how transparent the antenna is designed, the outer part of the transparent antenna is exposed from the human eye due to the difference in transparency between the radiator of the antenna and the surrounding environment. To overcome these problems, various transparent material and antenna design methods are proposed in this thesis. Firstly, new multilayer transparent conducting oxide materials and a copper grid layer were designed to propose transparent materials with high transparency and low sheet resistance. To design a transparent material having high transparency at a wide-looking angle, a transparent material with a double-sided structure coated with a non-conductive multi-layer transparent material on the back side is proposed. Finally, a high-efficiency transparent invisible antenna is proposed by designing a non-conductive dummy with similar transparency around the antenna radiator, which makes the radiator and the surrounding environment indistinguishable from the human eye without compromising efficiency. Using the proposed transparent materials, the transparent antenna and invisible antenna were implemented and verified by measurement. The proposed antennas have better performance compared with conventional transparent and invisible antennas.