Compact Antenna for Picosatellites Using a Meandered Folded-Shorted Patch Array

Abstract

The design and operation of a compact antenna array offering circularly polarized (CP) radiation for picosat and other small satellites for communication applications is presented. The proposed array combines the folded-shorted patches (FSPs) and meandering for antenna miniaturization. Realization of CP is achieved by a compact and planar feed circuit consisting of a network of meander-shaped 90° and 180° hybrid couplers, which can provide quadrature feeding of the FSP elements and can be integrated onto the backside of the antenna ground plane, which is only 5 × 5 cm <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup> . Agreement in terms of the simulations and measurements is observed with realized gain values of more than 3 dBic at 1.065 GHz and with an antenna size of 0.17λ0 × 0.17λ0.