Design and simulation of a broadband antenna for satellite communication

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to design an antenna suitable for satellite communications. This antenna will be a patch antenna to take advantage of its size, weight and price characteristics. As innovation, a coupled patch will be added, taking as reference the research in [8] and [9]. Those two papers will be, however, only a starting point, since our requirements are completely different. The antenna design will have three phases, in which the objectives will be progressively fulfilled. The first phase will consist in taking the idea seen in [8] and [9] and adapt it to our working band. In the second phase circular polarization will be achieved. And finally, in the third phase we will end the antenna design with the gain and radiation diagram. The text is divided in five chapters. The first one introduces the patch antennas and the satellite communications from a general point of view. The second chapter explains the patch antenna theory needed to understand the research done, beginning with physical characteristics and finishing with antenna arrays theory. The third chapter introduces and explains the parameters that will be simulated while designing the antenna, that we will use to decide whether the results are good or bad. The fourth chapter has the antenna research, using all the ideas exposed in the previous chapters. Finally, the fifth chapter summarizes all the work done. There are three appendixes. The first one introduces an alternative antenna design with different purposes from the main research. The second appendix shows the hardware and software used during the simulations. And the third one explains the coordinate system used along the work to represent the results. Satellite communications and patch antennas are introduced below.