E-shaped Aperture Coupled Microstrip Patch Array Antenna for High Speed Downlink Applications in Small Satellites
Abstract
For high speed downlinking of payload data from
small satellites, a new 4×4 aperture coupled microstrip patch
array antenna has been presented. The antenna is designed
for the Ku band and a peak gain of 18.0 dBi is achieved
within the impedance bandwidth from 11.75 GHz to 12.75 GHz.
Wide bandwidth is achieved as the patch elements are excited
through E-shaped slots having asymmetric side lengths and
widths. Each square patch element of the array with truncated
corners and appropriately placed slots generates right hand
circularly polarized (RHCP) radiation with very high cross-
polarization discrimination. A corporate feed network consisting
of T-junctions and quarter-wave impedance transformers is
developed to feed the array elements from a single coaxial port
of 50 Ω. To improve the radiation from the patches and wave-
guiding in the feed network, two types of Rogers substrates with
different dielectric constant and thickness are considered. Our
proposed microstrip patch array antenna of size 7.8 cm × 6.4
cm × 0.3 cm can perform efficiently with a downlink data rate
as high as 4.6 Gbps for small satellites.
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