FPA Based Design of 2x1 Microstrip Antenna Array for CubeSat Communications

An important subsystem of a CubeSat is the communication module where microstrip patch antennas are mostly used. The antenna array presented in this paper is devoted to CubeSat communication systems. This paper includes a new approach based on flower pollination algorithm, FPA, for the antenna angular inset-feed and its depth as well as the antenna radius. The designed antenna is a 2x1 circular patch array operating in the S-band (2-4 GHz). Each element of the antenna was fed by the new angular-inset feed technique recently published. This original technique is more effective than conventional inset feed one and provide a more flexibility to improve the impedance matching of the system. The new FPA metaheuristic is used to optimize the performance of each circular patch in terms of return loss, gain and impedance. Here, this antenna array is fed by a compensated power divider having a good impedance matching. The antenna array was simulated by FEKO electromagnetic software. The return loss obtained near the ISM frequency of 2,45 GHz is -27.9663 dB and the simulated gain reached is 9.06 dB