Compact Antenna and Antenna Array Designs for CubeSat

TARGET GROUP: CUBESAT COMMUNICATION IN LOW EARTH ORBIT

OBJECTIVES

·        To provide a comprehensive survey of CubeSat antennas used in CubeSat missions and of a collection of single element antennas and antenna arrays.

·        To avoid a complex deployment mechanism and can achieve high gains and tuneable characteristic to enable more challenging CubeSat missions.

SUMMARY

Communications is the ultimate aim of the satellites for without communication no data collected can be reported as all CubeSats invariably fall out of orbit and burnup upon re-entry. It is shown that the lifetime of CubeSats running lower than 300 km is 0-100 days, and a higher altitude might lead to a longer lifetime, up to two years at 400 km. CubeSats need to communicate telemetry and sensor data information. This data has been, for the most part, communicated on what may be considered as slow data rate links. This is due to two main factors; the low gain antennas that have been employed to date and a low transmit power available to the CubeSat. With the growth of small satellite technologies, these pico-satellites are being endowed with more challenging missions and higher expectations in communication abilities. For example, the Firefly CubeSat mission developed by NASA aims to explore the relationship between lightning and Terrestrial Gamma-ray Flashes (TGFs) in space. Currently, the data collected from Firefly shows up to 50 lightning strikes daily; this, however, is not sufficient to answer the mystery of TGFs. According to NASA’s investigator Doug Rowland, CubeSats need a higher data rate and even longer mission durations.

REFERENCE: https://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2020&context=theses1