Lunar Lander and CubeSat-based Payload Antenna System for a Surface Wireless Local Network

The numerous advantages that small satellites offer to both scientific and commercial space missions have made them an attractive option for lunar surface and deep space missions in recent years. The space industry is increasingly shifting to the use of smaller spacecraft and payloads at different phases of the mission, as opposed to the traditional large systems. While the use of small satellites broadens the limits of distinct space operations in terms of size, power, cost and mass budget, they present limitations in terms of communications coverage and performance. Wireless Local Area Networks (WLAN) offer excellent capabilities for short range applications that present high data throughput requirements. As lunar missions are being currently developed as means to do preliminary tests for deep space exploration, small satellite-based capabilities are being considered for their tasks. Considering this increase in lunar presence, the space industry is embracing well known and widely used WLAN standards, such as the standardized and ubiquitous IEEE 802.11, to create a communications and navigation network architecture similar to terrestrial Wi-Fi networks and as robust as possible to accommodate lunar mission requirements. In this work, an antenna system design, analysis, simulation, manufacturing and testing to use 5 GHz 802.11 WLAN capabilities in lunar surface applications are presented. Antenna design simulations are performed using Ansys HFSS and the analysis of the performance of the system is evaluated using Ansys SBR+. The design considers a small satellite payload being deployed from a lunar lander with two truncated-corner probe-fed (TCPF) patch antennas in both the lander and the payload sides. Simulations and measurements of the designs present peak gain values of 14.8 dBi and 8.2 dBi for the lander and the payload configurations, respectively, and link losses, including antennas, path loss and environment, lower than 50 dB at a range of 20 m. The system presents a link margin of approximately 30 dB for longer range applications, and beamsteerable capabilities adding a phase shift component. It offers a low-cost, low-weight, low-profile solution for small spacecrafts for lunar surface applications.