Gain enhanced circularly polarized antenna integrated with artificial magnetic conductor for S-band pico-satellites

A circularly polarized (CP) antenna integrated with an artificial magnetic conductor (AMC) plane is presented. The AMC plane is aimed at enhancing the gain of the CP antenna, besides reduced back-radiation, and avoiding radiation toward other high-frequency components on the CubeSat. It consists of a 3 x 3 array of diamond-shaped unit cells placed behind the complementary dipole-based antenna. To enable deployability and compact deployment size, the AMC structure is designed on a thin flexible Kapton film as substrate, whereas its metallic components are formed using Nickel conductive paint. Meanwhile, the CP antenna is designed on a thin Rogers RO4003C substrate and located on top of the AMC plane at a 20mm distance. The combined structure operates at 2.4 GHz with satisfactory reflection and radiation performance. It is sized at 99mm x 99mm x 21.485mm(3), with 450MHz (18%) of 10 dB impedance bandwidth and 250MHz (10%) of 3 dB axial ratio bandwidth. The AMC plane also improved its gain from 3.05 dBi up to 5.35 dBi.