Circularly Polarized Antenna Array with Sequential Rotation for Nanosatellites

This paper presents the design and characterization of an aperture-coupled microstrip antenna array to be installed onto a nanosatellite. The proposed antenna array has been optimized to operate at 2.26 GHz (S-Band), which is the operating frequency of the downlink channel of the Brazilian System for Meteorological Data Acquisition. The electromagnetic analyses are done by using the HFSS electromagnetic simulator. For the design validation, prototypes of single elements and antenna array were manufactured. The comparison between simulations and measurements indicates good performance of the designed antennas.