Compact UHF/VHF Monopole Antennas for CubeSats Applications

Abstract

In this paper, two compact monopole antennas working at 149 MHz (VHF) and 398 MHz (UHF) are proposed for CubeSats applications. Two monopole antennas are integrated on a double layer ceramic substrate. The overall dimensions of the folded antenna are 101 mm <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\times 40$ </tex-math></inline-formula> mm <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\times 8.9$ </tex-math></inline-formula> mm which is very small. Meander-line technique and foldable structure are proposed to achieve a compact design. The introduction of decoupling structure solves the problem of high coupling caused by small size. Computer simulations and measurements are conducted. The results demonstrate that the proposed design is a very promising candidate for CubeSats applications.