Metamaterial array based meander line planar antenna for cube satellite communication

Touhidul Alam; Ali F Almutairi; Md Samsuzzaman; Mengu Cho; Mohammad Tariqul Islam

doi:10.1038/s41598-021-93537-6

Metamaterial array based meander line planar antenna for cube satellite communication

Sci Rep. 2021 Jul 8;11(1):14087. doi: 10.1038/s41598-021-93537-6.

Authors

Touhidul Alam¹, Ali F Almutairi², Md Samsuzzaman³, Mengu Cho⁴, Mohammad Tariqul Islam⁵

Affiliations

¹ Space Science Centre (ANGKASA), Institute of Climate Change (IPI), Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 43600, Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia. touhidul@ukm.edu.my.
² Electrical Engineering Department, Kuwait University, 13060, Kuwait, Kuwait. ali.almut@ku.edu.kw.
³ Department of Computer and Communication Engineering, Faculty of Computer Science and Engineering, Patuakhali Science and Technology University, Dhaka, Bangladesh.
⁴ Laboratory of Spacecraft Environment Interaction Engineering (LaSEINE), Kyushu Institute of Technology, Fukuoka, 804-8550, Japan.
⁵ Department of Electrical, Electronic and Systems Engineering, Faculty of Engineering and Built Environment, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 43600, Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia. tariqul@ukm.edu.my.

Abstract

This research article presents a design and performance analysis of a metamaterial inspired ultra-high frequency (UHF) compact planar patch antenna for the CubeSat communication system that could be smoothly integrated with commercially available 2U Cube Satellite structure and onboard subsystem. The proposed antenna consists of two layers, one is two different width meander line antenna patch with partial ground plane and another layer is 3 × 2 near-zero-indexed metamaterial (NZIM) metamaterial array structure with ground plane. The NZIM array layer has been utilized to minimize the coupling effect with Cube Satellite structure and improve the frequency stability with enhanced antenna gain and efficiency. The fabricated antenna can operate within the lower UHF frequency band of 443.5-455 MHz. with an average peak gain of 2.5 dB. The designed antenna impedance stability characteristic has been explored after integration with the 2U Cube Satellite body layout. Besides, the antenna communication performance has been verified using 2U Cube Satellite free space path loss investigation. Small antenna volume with trade-off between the antenna size and performance are the key advantages of the proposed design, as the antenna occupies only 80 × 40 × 3.35 mm³ space of the 2U Cube Satellite body structure and the geometrical parameters can be designed to provide the best performance between 449 and 468.5 MHz.