Circularly Polarized Regolith Antenna for Future Lunar Communication

This paper presents a novel regolith (in-situ) -based substrate for a circularly polarized antenna. Fabrication of regolith substrate using regolith soil, cement, and water in a specific combination. Regolith substrate has been measured which has a low dielectric constant of 2.08 and a dissipation factor of 0.00527. The antenna works at a center frequency of 6.175 GHz. It uses two-stacked regolith substrates with each substrate having a size of 30 x 50 x 2 mm³. It has an RHCP single radiating patch with a corner truncation. The results show that the measured impedance bandwidth and axial ratio bandwidth are 794 MHz (12.8%) and 386 MHz (6.25%), respectively. The antenna has a gain of 6.3 dBic and a VSWR of 1.4 at 6.175 GHz. Regolith has great potential for an antenna substrate to support future telecommunication infrastructure in the lunar environment.