Multi-Band CubeSat Antenna and Design Considerations for Space Environment

In this paper, a slot-based multi-band CubeSat antenna is designed for CubeSat applications operating at the UHF band. The proposed antenna design consists of a frequency reconfigurable (FR) slot-based antenna fabricated on a FR-4 substrate. The frequency range covered by the FR antenna is 300-450MHz. A single varactor diode is used to sweep the frequency of the design. The proposed meandered loop-slot antenna design is small in size and has planar geometry with overall substrate dimensions of
$\mathbf{100}\times \mathbf{100}\ \mathbf{mm}^{2}$
. The proposed antenna with frequency reconfigurability is ideally suited for small satellite applications in the UHF band, especially CubeSats.