Ka-Band High-Gain Reflect-Array Metasurface Antenna Design for 1-U CubeSats

A high-gain reflect-array metasurface (MS) antenna applicable for emerging nano-satellites is presented in this paper. The designed MS antenna with an area of 96.39-by-96.39 sq. mm perfectly suits the 1-U CubeSats. It is worthwhile to mention that the proposed unit cell (UC) employed a polygonal-shaped patch whose key parameters were modified to obtain ten distinct phase responses. Then, a systematic positioning of UCs enabled the improvement of the antenna gain by focusing the main beam. Therefore, the MS antenna demonstrated a consistent high gain across a broad range of Ka-bands, with a peak value of 25.4 dBi at 28 GHz.