skip to main content
US FlagAn official website of the United States government
dot gov icon
Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.
https lock icon
Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( lock ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Explore Research Products in the PAR
It may take a few hours for recently added research products to appear in PAR search results.


Title: A Gain-Reconfigurable and Frequency-Beam-Steerable Additively Manufactured Antenna
Due to the exponential growth of small satellite technology, novel shapes for antennas have been explored to make them low-cost, lightweight, compact, and easy to deploy. The use of frequency beam-scan antennas reduces the complexity of the small satellite front-end by avoiding the need to use phase shifters, especially when a reliable inter-satellite link (ISL) is required to keep up the communication and the formation accurately in a CubeSat swarm mission. This paper reports the design and a manufacturing process focused on in-space manufacturing (ISM) of a fully 3D-printed leaky-wave antenna, using ULTEM 9085 for aerospace applications. The antenna shows frequency beam steering capabilities from 4.4 GHz to 7.4 GHz, and a gain reconfigurable by angular rotation of the ground planes. The resulting antenna shows a measured peak gain of 10.07 dBi at 6.5 GHz, with a gain reconfigurability, as function of the elevation angle of the ground planes, in the range of 0 to 40°, providing an additional gain from 0 to 2 dBi, respectively.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1944599
PAR ID:
10215619
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
2021 IEEE Radio and Wireless Symposium (RWS)
Page Range / eLocation ID:
4 to 7
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
More Like this
  1. ; (, Scientific Reports)
    A circular polarized (CP) pentaband antenna based on the aperture-in-aperture (AIA) concept is presented for CubeSat applications. This AIA consists of five different bands ranging from L-band to Ka-band. Four different antennas, each operating at a specific frequency band, namely 12 GHz, 18.5 GHz, 26 GHz, and 32 GHz, were incorporated into an L-band (viz. 1.5 GHz) antenna. Notably, the five antennas can operate simultaneously for a CubeSat downlink operation with a frequency ratio of 21.3:1. The antenna structure shows a realized gain of 5–10 dBi with good CP bandwidth (< 3 dB) across the overall operational frequency range. That is, the realized gain of L-band (1.5 GHz), X-band (12.5 GHz), K-band1 (18.5 GHz), K-band2 (26 GHz), and Ka-bands (32 GHz) are 5.05 dBi, 8.21 dBi, 7.33 dBi, 7.97 dBi, and 8.56 dBi. A high impedance surface (HIS) is incorporated with the Ka-band antenna to mitigate the ripples in the radiation pattern created by the interference of surface waves. A prototype was fabricated and tested. The measurement data agrees well with the simulation. 
    more » « less
  2. ; ; (, 2023 IEEE International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation and USNC-URSI Radio Science Meeting (USNC-URSI))
    This paper presents a high-gain and broadband radial elliptical-slot array (RESA) antenna with side-lobe mitigation technique for low-cost satellite communication systems. The aperture of the proposed slot array antenna comprises a set of orthogonal elliptical slots with monotonic slot length variation alongside the radius of the aperture. The design comprises radiating slotted top plate and bottom ground plate parallel to one another separated by an optimal distance of 5.25 mm which is 1.05λ . The design is back-fed using a disk-head radiator probe. The overall dimensions of the proposed slot array antenna with the air-gap taken into account are 300×300×5.75mm3 . Simulation results show that the proposed slot array antenna has a broadband operating frequency range from 45 GHz to 110 GHz and beyond, covering both V and W frequency bands with a fractional bandwidth of 88.8%. The peak gain of the proposed design is 35.6 dBi at 60 GHz. The array exhibits a maximum half-power beam width of 9.5°, a low sidelobe magnitude of - 4.12 dBi and a overall simple design indicates its suitability for low-cost SATCOM (satellite communications) applications. 
    more » « less
  3. ; ; ; ; (, Electronics)
    This paper presents a wideband low-profile dual-polarized patch antenna with helical-shaped L-probe feeding (HLF) for mmWave 5G mobile device applications. Parametric studies on the HLF structure are performed to identify the optimal specifications. As a result, the optimized antenna achieves a wide bandwidth of 5.4 GHz (24.2–29.6 GHz), good isolation > 18 dB between ports, and 5.1 dBi of good peak realized gain, which is experimentally verified with a 10× upscaled antenna. In addition, various one × four phased arrays with different port configurations and beamform capabilities are designed and simulated for the peak realized gain. The designed antenna array shows a high peak realized gain of 10 dBi, high isolation of 15 dB between the ports, and a small substrate thickness of 0.048λ0 (λ0 is the wavelength of 24.25 GHz). Compared to the state-of-the-art antennas, the designed dual-polarized antenna can operate in the frequency ranges of 24.25–29.6 GHz, including n257, n258, and n261 of the 5G new radio frequency range 2. 
    more » « less
  4. ; ; (, 2022 IEEE International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation and USNC-URSI Radio Science Meeting (AP-S/URSI))
    This paper presents a compact phased-array antenna for efficient and high-gain millimeter-wave-based 3D beam steering applications. The proposed antenna array consists of 2 × 2 unit cells and each unit cell is a sub-array comprising of 2 × 2 patch elements connected to microstrip lines that are co-fed by a single coaxial cable. Two 45° phase shifting lines are incorporated in each sub-array to facilitate the wide beamsteering range. The dimensions of the proposed phased array antenna are 24 × 24 × 0.324 mm 3 . Simulation results show that the proposed phased-array antenna has a resonating frequency at 58.4 GHz with an operational bandwidth from 50.1 GHz to 77.5 GHz along with a high gain of 26.8 dBi. The array exhibits a maximum beam steering range of 105° in the elevation plane and 195° in the azimuth plane with a gain variation less than 0.9 dBi. 
    more » « less
  5. ; (, 2022 IEEE International Symposium on Phased Array Systems & Technology (PAST))
    This paper presents a flexible 10 × 10 phased-array antenna for efficient and high-gain 3D beam steering applications. The proposed antenna array consists of 25 quadrants of 2 × 2 unit cells, wherein each 2 × 2 unit cell is coaxially fed. The 45° phase shifting lines are incorporated in the feeding paths to facilitate the wide beamsteering range. The dimensions of the proposed phased array antenna (PAA) are 90 × 90 × 0.324 mm 3 . Simulation results show that the proposed phased-array antenna has a resonating frequency at 24 GHz with an operational bandwidth from 23.64 GHz to 24.31 GHz along with a high gain of 29.4 dBi. The array exhibits a maximum beam steering range of 149.8° in the θ axis and 120° in the ϕ axis with a gain variation less than 0.9 dBi. The proposed flexible PAA is suitable for its placement on curved surfaces of autonomous vehicles such as UAVs(Unmanned aerial vehicles). 
    more » « less
  • Citation Formats
  • MLA
  • APA
  • Chicago
  • BibTeX
  • Save / Share this Record
  • Send to Email