An extendable solar array integrated Yagi-Uda UHF antenna for CubeSat platforms

The popularity of nano-satellites in academic, commercial and government organizations has risen dramatically in recent years, due largely to their low design and deployment costs. Despite their many successes, fundamental limits on their capabilities can be attributed in part to their limited communications packages. Using 70 cm amateur bands allows for lower power communications systems, however due to the larger wavelengths, managing antenna dimensions presents a design challenge. To improve mission capability, the current dipole configurations, that offer gains of approximately 5 dB, needed significant improvement. This paper presents a high-gain solution by incorporating a 6-element linear Yagi-Uda antenna into a deployable solar array prototype. Measured array gain was 11.5 dBi with a 53 MHz bandwidth, E- and H-plane half-power beamwidths of 46 and 58 degrees respectively, and an S11 of -19 dB at 435 MHz.