Active Antenna Concept in Small Satellite Applications

Abstract

Satellite communications using small satellites is one of the driving forces of the modern society with applications including weather monitoring and forecast, space exploration, telecommunications, high speed data transfer. These applications require constant communication between the satellite and the Earth, which can be a challenge for conventional communication modules and antennas. The current digital back-end realization is based on field-programmable gate array with SDR based radio frequency back end in one module. This configuration arises a lot problems connected to the heat dissipation, electromagnetic compatibility, higher mechanical requirements, and power loss in the cables. This paper proposes active antenna approach to small satellite applications in order to overcome the aforementioned drawbacks of the current configuration.