A Miniaturized Circularly Polarized Antenna Using a Meandered Folded-Shorted Patch Array for CubeSats

The design and operation of a miniaturized antenna array offering circularly polarized (CP) radiation for CubeSats and other micro-satellites is presented. The proposed antenna array combines folded-shorted patches (FSPs) and meandering for antenna miniaturization. Both techniques enable a decrease of the quarter-wavelength shorted patch while maintaining a quarter-wavelength resonant length. Realization of CP is achieved by an ultra-compact and planar feed circuit consisting of a network of meander-shaped 90° and 180° hybrid couplers, providing quadrature feeding of the FSP elements and for integration onto the backside of the antenna ground plane whose physical dimension is only 9 cm × 9 cm. Good CP performances are observed for the developed UHF-band antenna for the CubeSat standard and with a size of only $0.135 \lambda \times 0.135 \lambda$ considering the 450 MHz design frequency.