Design and Kinematics Characteristics Analysis of an Extendable Arm and Deployable Antenna

Due to the spatial constraints of payload bays in ground-based space launchers, certain large-scale spaceborne devices such as solar panel, antennas and arms cannot be launched and carried in their existing ground-based configurations. This paper addresses this situation by proposing a novel deployable antenna unit. Based on the screw theory and graph theory, a topological constraint graph for the deployable unit is established. Kinematic analysis and a simulation model for the deployable unit is developed to validate the correctness of the degree of freedom theoretical analysis. We conducted a novel space deployable antenna based on the deployable unit, and the simulation results indicate their deployability.