A Lightweight Broadband Circularly Polarized Stacked Patch Antenna Formed by Meshed Aluminum Disks for Inter-Satellite Communication

A broadband lightweight circularly polarized (CP) stacked patch antenna is proposed for use in the 1.8-2.3 GHz LEO-to-GEO inter-satellite links. It consists of four meshed aluminum disks supported by polyamide spacers. No dielectric substrate is used in the design to avoid heat storage in the substrate and reduce antenna weight. Thanks to the meshed structure, the antenna weight is reduced by half and is only 30 grams. The broadband CP radiation is achieved via the sequential rotation feeding structure and the stacked patch topology. For verification, a prototype antenna is built and tested. In addition to the agreement between the simulated and measured results, the prototype antenna exhibits an overlapped 10-dB return loss and 3-dB axial ratio bandwidth of 33.81% and in-band realized gain of 8.4-9.3 dBic at broadside, meeting the requirements of the intended inter-satellite link application.