Ricerc@Sapienza

We present the design and analysis of a K-band radially-periodic leaky-wave antenna radiating a circularly polarized broadside pencil beam. The structure is constituted by a metallic strip grating printed on top of a single-layer grounded dielectric slab, and is fed on the bottom by means of a square array of printed surface-wave launchers. The structure is optimized to support the fast n = -1 spatial harmonic, whose behavior has been accurately characterized through a full-wave dispersive analysis developed by means of an in-house method-of-moments (MoM) code.

This paper presents the design of a circularly polarized (CP) meshed patch antenna fully integrated within a solar panel for operation on CubeSats and other microsatellites. The structure has been designed to ensure optimal antenna performance at S -band as well as to minimize any shadowing effects that can reduce the received power at the solar cells. To generate CP, the antenna is driven by two orthogonal feed points, penetrating through a transparent borosilicate glass layer, as well as a silicon and PCB substrate.

The design of a K-band radial leaky-wave antenna is presented for polarization diversity applications. The antenna structure is constituted by an annular, radially periodic, and metallic strip grating printed on top of a single-layer grounded dielectric slab. The integrated feeding system is defined by a 2 × 2 array of planar slot sources for cylindrical surface-wave excitation.