Lightweight L and S-Band Antenna Fed by Three-Strip Directional Couplers Pawel Kabacik*(1), Grzegorz Jaworski(1), Monika Hornik(1), Tomasz

Maleszka(1) (1) Wroclaw University of Technology, 50-370 Wroclaw, Poland E-mail to the authors: first_name.name@pwr.wroc.pl Introduction Radioamateur installations in space migrates to lower microwave frequencies [1]. That trend establishes a challenge in designing antennas needed to serve spaceborne transceivers. The radioamateur equipment must be lightweight and does not call for deployment mechanism. Reliability requirements are high, as not often an onboard installation can be added to satellites or to modules of International Space Station. The lightweight antennas of excellent mechanical performance can be manufactured with composite panels [2]. To maintain a good link budget for users spread within several thousands of kilometers within radio horizon seen from spacecraft, superior quality of circular polarization is advised. Presently, it is feasible to provide a good quality of the circular polarization within the main beam of a patch element. To accomplish it in a wide band, patch must be fed through a pair of shaped coupling slots [3]. To support wideband circular polarization operation, the directional coupler in the feed circuit must keep the constant 90 phase shift and the amplitude balance between the transmission and coupling ports in the wide band. A good candidate is the three-strip coupler proposed by Sachse and Sawicki [4]. Antenna design and its performance One of the antenna models developed in a course of our studies on lightweight circularly polarized patch antennas made with lightweight composites is shown in Figure 1.

Fig. 1. Top view of one engineering antenna model; L and S-band circular patches have brown color (typical for copper through thin Kapton).

Fig. 2. Bottom view of the first antenna model revealing feeding microwave circuit, a microwave cable interface and a grounding strap.

Fig. 3. Wireline drawing presenting four stacked layers of the ARISS antenna printed circuits.

The antenna has two circular patches to optimize the performance in the L and S band. The feed network made in microstrip technique is located at the bottom side of the antenna and is shown in Figure 2. The circuit is composed of two polarizers and a diplexer. The polarizers are three-strip couplers with printed lines arranged in a way that there is no need to use soldered connection between two layers. The only solder is used at match loads at the isolated ports. The diplexer is made with two frequency traps, one in each branch. Traps are made with open and shorten stubs. The shorten stub makes a DC grounding of the antenna input.

Fig. 4. Side view of the antenna and rendered side view revealing its cylindrical profile (R2200 mm).

Fig. 5. Calculated return loss at a line feeding one of the coupling slots in the S-band patch.

The shape and arrangement of the feed slots in the ground is revealed with wireline drawing presented in Figure 3. The transparent drawings shows also how printed lines arranged on two layer of the three-strip couplers overlap each other. The engineering model shown in Figs 1 and 2 conforms to a cylindrical surface of space module. The cylindrical profile of the antenna adds three times more complexity in manufacturing on average. How the antenna profile looks like is shown in Figure 4.

coupler_2400_MHz
DB(|S[1,1]|) (L) coupler_2400_MHz DB(|S[3,1]|) (R) coupler_2400_MHz DB(|S[4,1]|) (R) coupler_2400_MHz

-2

-10

DB(|S[2,1]|) (L) coupler_2400_MHz

-2.5

-20

-3

-30

-3.5

-40 1.9 2 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 Frequency (GHz) 2.6 2.7 2.8 2.9

-4

Fig. 6. Calculated return loss, transmission, coupling and isolation for the three-strip directional coupler designed for the S-band patch. With a pair of the C-shaped coupling slots it is feasible to generate excellent circular polarization in the 60spherical angle of the main beam [5]. The impedance match is also good as shown by a calculated plot in Figure 5. To complete antenna design, three-strip couplers for each patch must be designed. Calculated and measured characteristics of the S-band coupler are presented in Figure 6 and 7, respectively. Phase shift between the transmission and coupled port is maintain close to 90 within the band exceeding 1 GHz. The measured return loss at the antenna input are plotted in Figure 8. Values are between 15 and 20 dB in frequency ranges of interest to radioamateur satellite services. Conclusions Printed patch element are attractive from the electromagnetic point of view, however, their practical use often calls for involvement of layered composite panels. With such approach. Patch elements can sustain mechanical loads

Fig. 7. Measured transmission and coupling for one model of the three-strip directional couplers.

or be integrated with antenna array carrying platforms. Owing to a lightweight multilayer structure with a thin substrate atop the thick one, the three-strip couplers put a lot of comfort in design of such antenna arrays. Wideband operation and low losses attract further attention to this coupler type as a good candidate for uses in antenna arrays. Dimensioning of the couplers are convenient for practical utilization in lower microwave bands. Furthermore, three-strip couplers make possible switching signals between printed circuit layers.

Fig. 8. Measured return loss of one antenna model at the input.

References:
[1] ARISS Amateur Radio on International Space Station, web pages www.rac.ca/ariss/ and www.ariss-eu.org. [2] Kabacik P., Sachse K., Sawicki A., Jaworski G., Bialkowski M., Airborne radar antenna modules using lightweight temperature-resistant materials, IEEE Int. Conf. Phased Array Systems and Tech., Dana Point, California, 2000. [3] P. Kabacik, K. Wincza, M. Kamaszuk, P. Hornik, Optimizing circular polarization in broadband lightweight patch antennas, 2005 IEEE Antennas and Propagation Soc. Int. Symposium, Washington DC, July 3-8, 2005. [4] K. Sachse and A. Sawicki, Quasi-ideal multilayer two- and three-strip directional couplers for monolithic and hybrid MIC, IEEE Trans. on MTT, vol. 47, no. 9, pp. 1873-1882, September 1999. [5] P. Kabacik, G. Jaworski, M. Kamaszuk, P. Hornik, T. Maleszka, Lightweight conformal dual band antenna for spaceborne applications, Proc. of the European Conference on Antennas and Propagation EuCAP 2006, Nice, France, 6-10 November 2006. [6] M. Kamaszuk, P. Hornik, D. Guzda, P. Kabacik, Optimizing circular polarization within a beam of patch antenna elements, Journal of Telecommunications and Information Technology, No. 1, 2007.