Miniature antennas for Cubersat

At present, there is an active process of miniaturization of whole space technology, including on-board equipment. On-board antenna-feeder devices also considered the process of miniaturization. Considering number of features of on- board antennas, there is an actual, modern task of developing a small-sized, low-profile, reliable, simple and high-tech antenna system of small spacecrafts. The purpose of this paper is to show the advantage of using microstrip antennas designed by printing technology in solving the problem of design small-sized, low-profile on-board antenna systems for small spacecrafts. These types of antenna have a low mass, volume, cost of the production, simplicity of construction etc. The variant of design on-board antenna system of CubeSat is considered. The main types of the construction of these spacecraft are presented. The design of the antenna and the material used as dielectric substrate is proposed and presented. Such an ap- proach allowed reducing the size of the onboard antenna in 2-2.5 times in comparison with existing analogues. With the using of computer aided design electrodynamics simulation was held. The results of design of model of an UHF-band on-board microstrip antenna using finite element method are shows. The basic model parameters such as voltage standing-wave ratio, radiation pattern, and gain during the simulation were obtained and evaluated. Also the influence of case of CubeSat to these parameters is shows. Then designed the layout of the antenna is presented. The measurements were carried out using the method of the reference antenna in the JSC “NIIEM”. The results of measurement of voltage standing-wave ratio, radiation pattern and gain are given in this paper. The good agreement between the results obtained during simulation and prototyping are presented. Thus, in this article a small-sized, low-profile UHF-band on-board antenna for CubeSat is proposed and developed.