Study of Stepped Amplitude Distribution Taper for Microwave Power Transmission for SSPS

A novel stepped amplitude distribution (SAD) taper for microwave power transmission for space solar power satellite is proposed in this paper. The SAD taper is described by the summation of the Heaviside step functions. Through optimizing the "height" and "radius" of each step of the descriptive function, the maximal beam collection efficiency (BCE) with and without constraints on the radiation levels can be obtained. A large set of numerical experiments on continuous apertures and discrete antenna arrays are carried out. The results show that the obtained BCEs can be close to or even higher than those of the 10-dB Gaussian ones, which shows the superiority of the method. In addition, only several kinds of amplifiers are required in this method, and therefore, the cost and complexity of the system can be greatly reduced.