Solar Panel Integrated Circular Polarized Aperture-Coupled Patch Antenna for CubeSat Applications

In this letter, we propose to integrate a microstrip antenna with commercial solar cells for CubeSat applications where there is a small surface area available for a combination of antennas and solar cells. By placing the radiator for an aperture-coupled patch antenna under the solar cells, it is shown that a directional antenna system can be incorporated into a CubeSat without significant impact to the performance of the antenna. Considering stringent size restrictions involved in CubeSat designs, the proposed solution provides significant overall system size reduction and design flexibility. The solar cell integrated antenna is designed for operation in the 2.2-2.3 GHz space-to-Earth downlink band. Circular polarization is achieved by feeding two 90° rotated patches with a 90° phase offset signal. The results show very promising performance.