Antenna design to support cooperative wireless routing in a fractionated space system

A simulation environment was created to study the tradeoffs in antenna design and their effects on Cooperative Wireless Routing in a satellite cluster. Simulations show Omni-RDA as a highly desirable antenna configuration. Although the RDA receivers are constantly consuming DC power for scanning, an OmniOmni configuration would require higher transmit power to overcome receiver noise. The simulation shows Omni-RDA providing lower BER at lower total energy consumption than Omni-Omni with SIC for most parameter selections within the range of interest for the DARPA F6 program.