S - band Planar Antennas for a CubeSat

Abstract

This paper studies the suitability of shorted patch and CPW-feed square slot antennas for CubeSat communications. To study the effect of the CubeSat body on the antennas performance, we have simulated both antennas in the High Frequency Structure Simulator (HFSS) with and without the CubeSat body. Compared to CPWfeed square slot antenna, the shorted patch antenna achieves higher gain and wider bandwidth. We have also re-dimensioned both antennas to shift their resonant frequencies to 2.45 GHz using Quasi Newton method in HFSS. This thus enables their use in the unlicensed ISM band. The repurposed shorted patch has smaller return loss; e.g., -27.5 dB (without CubeSat), higher gain; e.g., 5.3 dBi and wider bandwidth than the repurposed CPW-feed Square slot antenna. Lastly, further enhancement in the gain of re-dimensioned CPW-feed square slot antenna shows an increase of total gain from 2 to 2.52 dB.