IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation, 2026 (SCI-Expanded, Scopus)
The dilemma of optically transparent antennas, regardless of what material they are made from, has been the trade-off between transparency and antenna efficiency. This study examines the fundamental parameters that govern the two contradicting properties and presents optimized antenna designs for the two most basic antenna geometries: monopole and patch. For validation, monopoles and patches were fabricated using silver nanowires (AgNWs) that have a lower cost and an ease of preparation compared to transparent conductive oxides. The main reason for the gain reduction is Ohmic loss on the transparent conductor. Therefore, the gain improvement for the monopole antenna is to widen the geometry, and for the patch antenna, it is to raise the frequency, together with choosing an appropriate substrate. The gain is shown to be further enhanced by applying conductive strips at locations where the radiating current is concentrated, and by stacking transparent conductors. The two methods can be combined for further improvement. The prototyped AgNWs monopole antenna demonstrates a wide band operation from 3.5 GHz to 5.9 GHz, with an efficiency of 50.4% and an improvement to 76.3% with the addition of the conductive strips while keeping the optical transparency higher than 80%. The fully transparent patch antenna with both the patch and ground plane made of AgNWs is recorded to have a gain and efficiency of 3.58 dBi and 44% at 8.9 GHz. These designs outperform the existing studies in the transparency-gain trade-offs at relatively low frequency (<10 GHz), as most prior designs rely on raising the frequency to improve gain.