Figure 1-15. Photo of the 24. 5 Square Meter Rectenna at the Venus Site of the Goldstone Facility of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Power was transferred by microwave beam over a distance of 1.6 km and converted into over 30 kW of cw power which was dissipated in lamp and resistive load. Of the microwave power impinging upon the rectenna, over 82% was converted into de power. The rectenna consisted of 17 subarrays, each of which was instrumented separately for efficiency and power output measurements. Each rectenna housed 270 rectenna elements, each consisting of a half-wave dipole, an input filter section, and a Schottky-barrier diode rectifier and rectification circuit. The de outputs of the rectenna elements were combined in a series-parallel arrangement that produced up to 200 volts across the output load. Each subarray was protected by means of a self-resetting crowbar in the event of excessive incident power or load malfunction. Each diode was self-fused to clear it from short-circuiting the array in the event of a diode failure.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTU5NjU0Mg==