Development of a circularly polarized L-band SAR deployable mesh reflector antenna for microsatellite earth observation

The first circularly polarized L-band synthetic aperture radar (CP-SAR) antenna on-board the small satellite mission GAIA-II is presented. The antenna is a deployable mesh reflector antenna, with gain larger than 30 dBic and narrowband around center frequency of 1.275 GHz. The main mission of GAIA–II is land deformation monitoring and disaster prevention and mitigation. The current work describes the development of a compact CP L-band antenna onboard the microsatellite CP-SAR, focusing the design & simulation of the reflector dish and structures.