Abstract
This research article presents a design and performance analysis of a metamaterial inspired ultra-high frequency (UHF) compact planar patch antenna for the CubeSat communication system that could be smoothly integrated with commercially available 2U Cube Satellite structure and onboard subsystem. The proposed antenna consists of two layers, one is two different width meander line antenna patch with partial ground plane and another layer is 3 × 2 near-zero-indexed metamaterial (NZIM) metamaterial array structure with ground plane. The NZIM array layer has been utilized to minimize the coupling effect with Cube Satellite structure and improve the frequency stability with enhanced antenna gain and efficiency. The fabricated antenna can operate within the lower UHF frequency band of 443.5–455 MHz. with an average peak gain of 2.5 dB. The designed antenna impedance stability characteristic has been explored after integration with the 2U Cube Satellite body layout. Besides, the antenna communication performance has been verified using 2U Cube Satellite free space path loss investigation. Small antenna volume with trade-off between the antenna size and performance are the key advantages of the proposed design, as the antenna occupies only 80 × 40 × 3.35 mm3 space of the 2U Cube Satellite body structure and the geometrical parameters can be designed to provide the best performance between 449 and 468.5 MHz.
Highlights
Have gain special attention for the small satellite communication system, owing to their low profile and ease of fabrication[4,5,6]
The size of the lower UHF antenna becomes larger in size, which grabs a large volume of the CubeSat body surface and makes them difficult to place adequate solar cells
Lots of patch antennas have been studied for the nanosatellite communication s ystem8, 9. In10, a UHF 433 MHz printed patch antenna has been developed, which was printed on 51 mm × 28 mm FR-4 substrate material
Summary
Have gain special attention for the small satellite communication system, owing to their low profile and ease of fabrication[4,5,6]. A meander line structured antenna has been developed for telemetry and telecommand applications of LAPAN-TUBSAT, was operated at 428–468 MHz. The antenna achieved 2.9 dBi gain with dimensions of 160 × 140 mm[212]. The proposed antenna was consisted of a same width meander line patch and metamaterial inspired partial ground, where metamaterial structures were placed on the same plane of the ground plane This antenna suffers lower efficiency and lower gain. The design evolution of the proposed antenna is illustrated with reflection coefficient, shown, where shows that the metamaterial array embedded antenna resonates at 450 MHz. To enhance antenna radiation performance, single metamaterial unit cell was placed behind ground layer of the antenna, which shifted resonating frequency downwards. The normalized Equation for the frequency tuning is proposed based on the critical parameter of L2, depicted in Eq (1)
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