Pattern reconfigurable antenna for the Inter satellite communication of Formation Flying Mission

Abstract

Small satellites are uprising in the present decennium. It s the era of small satellites, which ensures that all the subsystems to be scaled down. It possesses a more challenging restriction on size, circuitry, and components as they are expected to be closely spaced and power efficient. Antenna plays a vital role in the communication subsystem hence the main focus of the RF scientists is to design a compact, lightweight, low production cost, less power consumption antenna. Constellation and formation flying missions (FFM) are emerging as attractive technology in the space industry. FFM is a new paradigm in space missions aimed at flying multiple small satellites in a tightly controlled and coordinated fashion to achieve the objective of one larger, complex and expensive satellite. FFM has several advantages such as distributed scientific modules, simpler designs, it shows a significant reduction in the launch budget, production cost, time scale, and if any software component or a satellite fails in the cluster, the whole mission will not abort; the cluster tries to reconfigure itself to achieve the mission target. Faster communication between the satellites is necessary for surveillance, telecommunications, and reconnaissance applications. Hence Inter-satellite link (ISL) is a must for ensuring the success of FFM. newlineIn this thesis, different types of antennae are designed and developed for various applications such as Patch antenna for GPS, X-band 8*8 array antenna for payload data transmission, and a Quadrifilar helical antenna as the main antenna for Telemetry Tracking and command (TTandC) of the microsatellite RSAT of PES University. A novel power-efficient compact null filling transceiver patch antenna for TTandC application and an innovative reconfigurable pattern switching antenna, for the inter-satellite communication of FFM, is proposed. The proposed antennae satisfy all the space, small satellite, and FFM constraints. The proposed single null filling antenna performs both uplink and downlink operations unlike