Dual Sense Circularly Polarized Compact Slot Antenna for CubeSat Applications

Abstract

A dual feed dual sense circular polarized (CP) slot based wideband UHF antenna is proposed. The proposed structure is very compact which makes the design a suitable candidate for Cube-Sat applications. It consists of a hexagonal thin slot and two feeding transmission lines. In order to achieve CP, the two transmission lines are placed symmetrically with respect to the slot. The shape and location of transmission lines and slot structure are critical and achieved using a parametric analysis. To achieve wideband characteristics with a compact size, the slot is constructed with a capacitive loading. The design is fabricated on Rogers RO4350 with an overall board size of $60\times 60\times 1.52$ mm3. The simulated and measured results have verified that the proposed antenna design operates over a wide frequency range from 360 MHz to 470 MHz.

Keywords

• Circular polarization
• cube satellite
• electrically small antenna
• slot antenna