Characterization of Two Types of Conformal Antennas for Cubesats
نویسندگان
چکیده
Antennas conformal to a Cubesat surface have many advantages compared to deployed antennas. This study presents two types of conformal antennas that do not compete for the expensive surface real estate with solar cell. The first type of antenna is optically transparent antennas integrated directly on top of commercial solar cells. The second solution is slot antennas that can be placed around solar cells. For the transparent antenna, by optimizing the antenna geometry, we are able to achieve about 95% transparency. We have measured the performance of solar cells with the antenna integrated on them. It is found that the overall effect of the antenna on the entire solar panel is less than 3% and therefore promising the future implementation of such antennas in small satellite missions. For the slot antenna design, compared to the previous fully integrated prototype, we present an alternative excitation method to achieve circular polarization. In addition, this study provides a solution for UHF antennas, which is very challenging with traditional methods due to the size limitation of Cubesats. It is shown that one can feasibly design a UHF antenna with slot geometry by considering all four walls of a Cubesat.
منابع مشابه
Conical Conformal Antenna Design using the CPM Method for MIMO Systems
Abstract- In this article, the design of conformal antennas has been discussed using the characteristic modes (CM) method. For this purpose, the vector wave function(VWF) has been utilized to achieve a two-dimensional mapping of the conformal antenna. In designing and analyzing of cone-shaped antennas applicable for multi-input multi-output (MIMO) systems, the most important goal is to achieve ...
متن کاملA Planar Antenna and Modular Subsystem Design for Cubesats
Previous University of Hawaii CubeSats constantly used new designs for each succeeding project. Having to redesign the three major subsystems (TTC, PGD, CDH) to accommodate a particular payload resulted in long development times and a steep learning curve for new members. To avoid these problems a modular subsystem design was researched and implemented. The utilization of standard connectors wi...
متن کاملDevelopment of Low-profile Antennas for CubeSats
The advent of transparent antennas on CubeSats originated out of necessity to eradicate the current mechanically dependent monopole antennas that are typically placed on the edges of the satellite to maximize the efficacy of its solar panels. Consequently, as a direct result of their mechanical deployment methods, these antennas are highly prone to failure. Standard patch antennas cannot be use...
متن کاملSeveral Types of Antennas Composed of Microwave Metamaterials
We present a review of several types of microwave antennas made of metamaterials, including the resonant electrically small antennas, metamaterial-substrate patch antennas, metamaterial flat-lens antennas, and Luneburg lens antennas. In particular, we propose a new type of conformal antennas using anisotropic zero-index metamaterials, which have high gains and low sidelobes. Numerical simulatio...
متن کامل