Novel deployable reflectarray antennas for CubeSat communications

Author

Hodges, Richard E. ; Hoppe, Daniel J. ; Radway, Matthew J. ; Chahat, Nacer E.

Author_Institution

Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Technol., Pasadena, CA, USA

fYear

2015

fDate

17-22 May 2015

Firstpage

1

Lastpage

4

Abstract

Two novel high gain deployable reflectarray antennas to support CubeSat telecommunications are described and compared with other high gain CubeSat antenna technologies. The first reflectarray is the Integrated Solar Array and Reflectarray Antenna (ISARA), a K/Ka-band antenna that also incorporates a dense packing of solar cells used to provide electrical power for the spacecraft. The second is an X-band reflectarray designed to provide a bent pipe telecom link. These reflectarrays are ideal for CubeSat applications because they require negligible stowed volume and impose a modest mass increase. The antenna designs and measured performance results are presented.

Keywords

reflectarray antennas; satellite antennas; solar cell arrays; CubeSat telecommunications; ISARA; K-band antenna; Ka-band antenna; X-band reflectarray; bent pipe telecom link; electrical power; high gain deployable reflectarray antennas; integrated solar array-and-reflectarray antenna; modest mass; solar cells; stowed volume; Feeds; Heating; Space technology; Antenna; CubeSat; reflectarray; solar array; telecommunications;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Microwave Symposium (IMS), 2015 IEEE MTT-S International

Conference_Location

Phoenix, AZ

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/MWSYM.2015.7167153

Filename

7167153