Reconfigurable deployable antennas for space communications

This paper discusses the merging of reconfigurable and deployable antennas for satellite and space communications. Reconfigurable antennas, normally proposed for terrestrial applications, allow deployable antennas to be more adaptive and more capable to perform additional functions. In this paper, various antenna concepts that can deploy and at the same time possess frequency tuning capability are proposed for space communications. The addition of tuning ability allows a more efficient, selective and cognitive communication schemes.