A dual-band dual-feed Fresnel zone antenna concept: application in solar sails missions

A Fresnel Zone (FZ) antenna is envisioned to be integrated as a part of a large sail structure in the solar sail mission (see Khayatian, B. et al., IEEE APS Int. Sym., vol.2, p.742-5, 2001). Furthermore, a design was proposed to accommodate enough antenna gain to satisfy the communication link requirements. Spacecraft communication takes place over the uplink and downlink X-band around 8.49 and 7.16 GHz. This, in turn, requires an operating bandwidth of more than 9% for the Fresnel antenna configuration. Since the operating bandwidth of FZ antennas is inversely proportional to their number of rings, the bandwidth of the proposed 10 m FZ antenna (having F/D=1, with 33 rings) cannot exceed 3% (see Khayatian et al.). To enhance the required bandwidth criterion of the FZ antenna, a dual-band design of this antenna configuration is investigated.