Deployable Log-Periodic Dipole Array Antenna for CubeSats

A CubeSat is a miniaturized satellite that has become increasingly popular as a way for smaller academic and commercial institutions to develop the skills and knowledge involved in launching space missions. CubeSats are low-cost in their design and deployment, which can perform many functions that larger satellites can such as imaging, space specific research, and inter-satellite/deep space communications. However, they are fundamentally limited by their strict size and mass requirement. This results in challenges on the antenna design, which must achieve required performance to communicate with ground stations. Conventional CubeSat-based antennas have fundamental limitations in low realized gain and narrow frequency bandwidth. This paper presents a high gain and wide bandwidth antenna by utilizing a deployable Log-Periodic Dipole Array (LPDA) that still provides enough surface area for the use of solar panels. This design should be able to achieve a 2:1 bandwidth ratio with a very low VSWR throughout the bandwidth while maintaining a gain of approximately 10 dBi. In comparison, most typical CubeSat antenna designs only achieve bandwidths ranging approximately from 1% to 45% with comparable levels of gain. It will operate in the S band ranging from 2 GHz to 4 GHz, which will be used mainly for communications, telemetry, and high data-rate downlinks. Due to the wide bandwidth, it will allow the CubeSat to send and receive multiple types of data simultaneously. This could be useful for more complicated missions that require large amounts of data to be collected, as well as allowing the CubeSat to achieve higher data transmission rate when in range of ground stations.