PhD Thesis Defense

Wireless power transfer at a distance, long relegated to the realm of science fiction, has seen a resurgence in recent years. Chief among its promises is Space-Based Solar Power (SBSP), an ambitious project to deploy kilometer scale photovoltaic arrays in space and beam its power down to Earth using a complementary microwave phased array. The building blocks of the array are phased array tiles, which can be instantiated to produce larger apertures. The tile must be simultaneously lightweight and flexible for deployment in space, low-cost, high-performance, and scalable. This defense presents the design and testing of next-generation, fully flexible 8x8 element phased array tile. The tile is driven by a custom 22-nm CMOS FDSOI RFIC that achieves record efficiency and performance. These results represent not only a step forward toward practical microwave wireless power transfer but offer new directions in communications and sensing driven by flexible arrays.