Monopole Antenna design for CubeSat

In this project, I designed, fabricated, and tested a monopole antenna with a ground plane on the side of the CubeSat. The antenna is designed to operate at 436.65MHz. I had collaborations with mechanical engineering students to make sure that the antenna will be deployed and there are no issues from the mechanical point of view.

The design process was as follows:

First, I designed the monopole antenna itself and checked the results. Next, I added a ground plane and checked the results with available literature results to make sure the simulation results are promising and correct. The last design step was to simulate the whole CubeSat in HFSS software. Once I finished the simulations, I measured the antenna in the CATR measurement chamber of the University of Manitoba to make sure that simulation results match the actual measurements.

For the feeding mechanism, I utilized a lumped port feeding in HFSS software. To make the deployable, I utilized a stainless steel measuring tape as the main body of the antenna with a thickness of 0.1mm, chord length of 14.5mm, and rise of 2.5mm. The ground plane based off of the mechanical engineering team's suggestion was fabricated from copper material.

This satellite will be licensed soon and will be launched in near future. I have provided a figure of the Cube satellite geometry in the following. The antenna and the ground plane are highlighted in red and orange, respectively.