A Quadrifilar Helix Antenna for LEO Satellite Navigation Augmentation Module

With the demand and development of high-precision navigation and positioning, low earth orbit (LEO) satellite constellation as a new satellite platform with navigation augmentation is rising rapidly. Due to the limitation of size, a miniaturized and multi-band transmitting antenna with inconsistent phase center is a challenge. In this paper, a multi-band printed quadrifilar helix antenna (PQHA) is proposed for LEO to achieve triband. Four helical arms are equidistantly wrapped around a supporting cylinder, with diameter of 60mm and height of 220mm. The antenna can provide bandwidth of 200MHz for satellite navigation, which contains GPS L1/L2, and BDS B1/B2/B3. Based on the simulation, the proposed antenna can be a good candidate for LEO platform.