Low-Profile Wideband Solar-Cell-Integrated Circularly Polarized CubeSat Antenna for the Internet of Space Things

This paper proposes a low-profile wideband circularly polarized (CP) antenna using solar cell patches as radiation elements and sequentially rotated feeding network for CubeSat applications. To realize wide axial ratio (AR) bandwidth with compact size, was designed by modifying quadrature hybrid coupler rat-race that has small change in phase difference even when the frequency changes. A CP patch array combining C-shaped slot-coupled conjunction novel network. The overall size of proposed is 100 × 7.2 mm3 (0.83 λo 0.83 0.06 at 2.5 GHz). Solar cells occupy 79% area, enabling efficient energy harvesting. –10 dB impedance 1.98–3.0 GHz, which fractional approximately 41.0%. 3-dB AR gain bandwidths are GHz (41.0%) 1.82–2.98 (46.6%), respectively. demonstrates constant pattern within bandwidth. suitable use an Internet Space Things (IoST) autonomous communication system.