A Ku-Band Deployable Broadband Reflectarray for CubeSat Applications

In this paper, a broadband foldable reflectarray (FRA) antenna mounted onto a 3U CubeSat frame is presented. The Ku-band reflectarray is linearly polarized and is fed with a pair of wideband Vivaldi antennas that produce a symmetric illu-minating radiation pattern. This high-gain antenna incorporates a stowage and deployment mechanism for both the reflectarray and the Vivaldi feed antenna elements. The bandwidth of the reflectarray is maximized through optimized reference phase mapping with multi-resonant elements. The measured gain for the two-element Vivaldi array feed is 10.3 dBi at 15.2 GHz, and measured results for the fabricated reflectarray mounted on a CubeSat frame show a maximum gain of 24.7 dBi at 15.2 GHz with a 4°3-dB beamwidth. The reflectarray achieves a measured realized gain of greater than 20 dBi from 11.7 GHz to 16.2 GHz.