Student antenna design for a nanosatellite

Utah State University is building a nanosatellite that will cooperate with satellites built by the University of Washington and Virginia Tech to perform important ionospheric investigations, as well as test various aspects of formation flying around the earth. These satellites must be able to communicate with each other as well as communicate with the ground stations. This paper describes the nanosatellite program at Utah State University (USUsat). In addition, the communication link budget and antenna designs for this satellite are described in detail. The ground station will have an array of helical antennas, while the antennas on the satellites will be circularly polarized microstrip patches.