Optimized UHF Patch Antenna for Cryospheric Communications on Europa

To search for extraterrestrial life, a semi-autonomous, thermo-nuclear powered cryobot has been designed to penetrate the 20–50 km of cryogenic ice surrounding the inner ocean of the Jovian moon, Europa. Several cryospheric (in ice) communication schemes have been devised to relay critical science data from the cyrobot to a surface station. One such system is a relay system of transceiver “pucks” that are released from the cyrobot as it burrows through the ice. These relays form a wireless network connecting the cyrobot and surface station. In this paper a circularly polarized, circular patch antenna with a matching layer is designed and optimized for cyrospheric communications as the physical layer of the puck relay network. A hybrid theoretical and simulation based design technique is presented, and predicted parameters achieve good agreement with compared measurements.