Highly Miniaturized Folded-Slot Based MIMO Antenna Design for CubeSat Applications

In this paper, a highly miniaturized folded slot-based multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) antenna design is presented for Cube Satellites (CubeSats) applications at UHF band. It consists of meandered slot structure folded on both sides of the substrate board. Miniaturization is achieved using a unique combination of meandered slot with folded structure along with reactive slot loading using capacitor. The antenna exhibits wide-band operation covering frequency bands from 430∼510 MHZ. The proposed antenna design has a total board dimensions of $100\times 100\ mm^{2}$. The proposed antenna is best suited to be utilized in small satellite especially for CubeSats applications.