Jesse Brunet, Alex Ayling, and Ali Hajimiri receive 2026 IEEE Journal of Microwaves Best Paper Award for the paper “Transmitarrays for Wireless Power Transfer on Earth and in Space, The award will be conferred at the annual Society Awards Banquet to be held during the International Microwave Symposium held June 2026 in Boston, Massachusetts.

This paper presents a space solar power system using transmitarrays for lowering the system’s LCOE (Levelized Cost of Energy). We discuss the theoretical framework for transmitarrays in the context of wireless power transfer, including the transmission phase limit associated with layered frequency selective surfaces. It then presents a proposal for using transmitarrays in intermediate orbits to lower the LCOE of space solar powered systems that are limited by the transmitting aperture size. Finally, it shows the design and fabrication of a low-cost, lightweight static transmitarray prototype and demonstrate a 2.4x increase in power transferred from the phased array transmitter to the rectenna receiver.