Transparent and Nontransparent Microstrip Antennas on a CubeSat: Novel low-profile antennas for CubeSats improve mission reliability

This article reviews the development of some novel low-profile antennas for CubeSats. The integrated antennas were developed using microstrip-antenna technology, and the antennas were designed to be low profile while having minimal (or zero) blockage of the solar panels on the CubeSat. Two types of designs were investigated: 1) transparent antennas, which are placed above the solar panels (supersolar) and 2) nontransparent antennas, which are placed below the solar panels (subsolar). For past: using transparent metal and using a wire mesh design. The transparent metal indium tin oxide has a comparatively high sheet impedance, which makes an antenna design less efficient. Also, there is a tradeoff between conductivity and transparency [6]. However, a highly conductive thin mesh structure has demonstrated a reasonable efficiency and a high transparency [7]. The substrate must then also be transparent, e.g., glass or quartz.