A 7 m × 1.5 m Aperture Parabolic Cylinder Deployable Mesh Reflector Antenna for Next-Generation Satellite Synthetic Aperture Radar
Yahya Rahmat‐Samii, Junbo Wang, Jeremy Zamora, Gregg Freebury, Richard Hodges, Stephen Horst
Abstract
A high-priority next-generation satellite remote sensing mission necessitates a lightweight deployable antenna that can fit in the package of low-Earth orbit (LEO) small satellites. In this work, we present the development of a 7 m <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\times1.5$ </tex-math></inline-formula> m aperture C-band parabolic cylinder mesh reflector along with a 1 × 32 element linear patch array feed. The detailed and tailored mechanical design, full-wave analysis, and measurements of the reflector are elaborated. The reflector is constructed with a mesh surface with unique deployment mechanisms for weight reduction and stowage. The linear microstrip patch array feed is designed with a lightweight honeycomb substrate and is used for the breadboard testing of the parabolic cylinder reflector. The antenna achieved the desired surface accuracy and a measured gain of 42.06 dBi at 5.357 GHz, with half-power beamwidths of 0.52° and 2.35° in the two principal planes.