A Low-profile High-efficiency Isoflux Antenna for CubeSat Applications

This paper presents a low-profile, high-efficiency isoflux beam circularly polarized antenna for CubeSat applications. It mainly consists of two parts, namely the high-efficiency feeding network and low profile circularly polarized radiator. The feeding network is based on a sequentially fed radial planar waveguide to reduce feeding length and thus improve efficiency. Several sets of concentric annular slots are cut on the radial planar waveguide, and corner-cut patches are placed on the slots, which realizes the radiator generating rotational symmetrical isoflux CP radiation. The proposed isoflux antenna features both low-profile and high radiation efficiency. A prototype operating at 8.4GHz is designed to prove the idea.