Análise e projeto de redes refletoras embarcadas em nanossatélite

Abstract

This work presents the characteristics and design aspects of reflectarrays antennas (RAs) in the 8.6 GHz for space applications. RA presents the facility of conformation on the nanosatellite’s structure during the release. The design should satisfy the frequency operation, the desired bandwidth, the maximum dimensions of Cubesat’s area, and the minimum spacing between elements that compose the reflectarrays. The phase distributions on the aperture are determined using the variable-sized patches technique. The sizes of elements are calculated with the phase curves obtained from Floquet approach applied into electromagnetic simulator Ansys Electronics. In this work is designed a feeder based in 2×2 microstrip antenna for properly illuminate the surface of reflectarrays. Additionally, several RAs are analyzed to axial and offset feeders. The simulated results are investigated to verify the gain of radiation pattern and to calculate the aperture efficiency. Several discussions are presented, such as mutual coupling between patches, spillover, phase error, half-power beamwidth, gain, sidelobes level, main beam direction, and nanosatellite interference in the radiation patterns.