Development of X-band antenna for CUBESAT platform

Design, development, and measurements of X-band patch antennas for a CubeSat platform are presented in this paper. The challenge was in the design of circularly polarized patch antennas suitable for building an array since the goal is to achieve highest possible radiation efficiency. Therefore, six antenna designs were developed which can be differentiated by the number of PCB layers and by the method of excitation. Also, for achieving circular polarization two shapes were considered, a corner truncated square patch and a nearly square patch. The characteristics of the developed antennas were analyzed and measured showing the advantages and disadvantages of certain designs. Based on the analysis of measured results we reached guidelines that will be used further for designing the full X-band array.