A wideband liquid antenna with high optical transparency for ultra-high-definition television applications

In this letter, an optically transparent and wideband liquid antenna for UHD-TV applications is presented. The proposed antenna utilizes a high concentration of dissolved salts as the conductor inside a hollow L-shaped clear acrylic component, offering very high optical transparency of more than 87% (@200 ppt) in the visible range. The electrical performance of the antenna is optimized and verified through experiments, showing good agreement between the simulation and the measurement. The results show that the antenna has a wide bandwidth of 390 MHz (410–800 MHz; 64.5%) and high radiation efficiency of up to 72% over the entire bandwidth range for UHD-TV applications (470–771 MHz; 48.4%). This demonstrates the proposed antenna can be considered as an attractive alternative to conventional external transparent antennas for UHD-TV applications.