High Gain Slot Antenna with Reflector for 2U CubeSat

Abstract

A small size and high gain slot antenna is proposed for 2U CubeSats communications. The main idea is to use a metallic part of2U CubeSat's surface at distance of 12 mm below the antenna as a reflector to redirect the back radiation forward. This leads to a substantial suppression of back lobe radiation and hence significant increase of the antenna total gain. The simulation results show that the antenna achieves a superior gain of 9.39 dB, wide b-10 dB bandwidth of 370 MHz (2.53-2.90 GHz) and return loss of −22 dB at a resonant frequency of 2.7 GHz.