Feature article: Reconfigurable S-band patch antenna system for cubesat satellites

A novel S-band patch antenna system compatible with the CubeSat Standard has been presented. The antenna has been designed on the basis of the specifications of the Tigrisat mission but is suit-able for more general cases. The antenna is fabricated on a square annular-ring substrate that allows hosting of a camera system for Earth observation. Different radiation patterns can be achieved by properly phasing the feeds of the four patches that constitute the antenna. A mission analysis for the nadir-pointing attitude case, which is the case of the Tigrisat satellite, has been performed in order to select the configuration that ensures better link performances. The selected configuration has an "apple"-shaped radiation pattern that resembles the isoflux configuration for which the path loss due to range variation is partly compensated by an increase of the off-nadir gain. The characterization of the fabricated antenna in anechoic chamber in terms of radiation pattern and impedance matching shows a very good agreement with simulation results.

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