VHF/UHF Ultrawideband Tightly Coupled Dipole Array for CubeSats

To date, CubeSat radars and imagers have been limited to operations beyond S-band due the challenges associated with design of wideband, compact, low-frequency antennas. Concurrently, frequencies at VHF/UHF bands can image through clouds foliage, are very attractive for ice, water biomass sensing. There is thus a need develop wideband antennas that operate which low cost, light-weight, packable. In this paper, we present deployable Tightly Coupled Dipole Array (TCDA) achieves VSWR<; 3 from 80 MHz - 600 MHz, 4 65 MHz. While array itself 1.2 m in length, 10 cm width 1.5 mm thickness, it be folded stowed compact volume 0.40U. We detail array, demonstrate folding mechanism, validate its performance measurements.