ELECTRICALLY SMALL PRINTED ANTENNA FOR APPLICATIONS ON CUBESAT AND NANO-SATELLITE PLATFORMS

A very compact circularly polarized antenna to be utilized readily on nanosatellite and CubeSat platforms is presented. Nanosatellite and CubeSats have very limited volume and surfaces bringing a physical size constraint on the components and antennas which should also be as functional as their counterparts used in similar terrestrial systems. The proposed structure is a cavity-backed antenna with tapered crossed-slot aperture. The antenna is a low-profile compared to wavelength, circularly polarized and wide-band with respect to conventional high-Q printed antennas. Two different designs to operate at 2.44 GHz are implemented on two different substrates, occupying a footprint of 38 mm x 38 mm and 30 mm x 30 mm. Their measured percentage impedance bandwidths are 2% and 1.68%, respectively. The obtained maximum gain is about 5 dBic around the target frequency. (c) 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 57:891-896, 2015