A Small Size Wideband M-shaped Polygonal Slot Antenna for X-band Satellite Applications

Abstract

This paper presents a small size M-shaped polygonal slot antenna for X-band satellite telemetry and Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) applications. The proposed antenna has been designed on a Roger RT-Duroid 5880 substrate. The reflection coefficient |S11| of the proposed antenna covers the whole X-band from 6.63 GHz to 12.566 GHz. The proposed antenna is circularly polarized with axial ratio (AR) bandwidth that extends from 7.76 GHz to 8.58 GHz. The proposed antenna provides a simultaneous dual circular polarizations (RHCP and LHCP). The gain of the proposed antenna varies between 6.6 dBi and 9.4 dBi. The proposed antenna realizes an efficiency of 92%. The overall size of the proposed antenna is 17 × 16 × 0.508 mm 3 (0.56λ0 × 0.53λ0 × 0.016λ0). Therefore, it is suitable to be employed in satellite telemetry application from 7.9 GHz to 8.4 GHz especially for CubeSats that have limited surface area. Apart from that, this antenna finds its applications in SAR on small satellites from 9 GHz to 10 GHz, military, and RFID tag (tracking equipment). It has been observed that the measurement results match the simulated ones. The proposed antenna design can be practically employed for the previously mentioned applications.