DEVELOPMENT OF DUAL-BAND CIRCULARLY POLARIZED ANTENNAS FOR GNSS REMOTE SENSING ONBOARD SMALL SATELLITES (original) (raw)

The design and development of dual frequency antennas for a Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) based remote sensing instrument is presented. Two such antennas have been developed facing zenith and nadir directions. Both antennas cover L1 and L2 bands, centred at 1.575 GHz and 1.227 GHz, respectively. Antennas are to be body mounted onboard a small satellite (UK-DMC type) as a part of remote sensing instrument targeting at the study of ocean roughness (through reflectometry) and space occultation measurements. Zenith and nadir antennas are developed with different specifications of gain, beamwidth and polarisation. The zenith antenna facing in the upward direction is a single element patch and gets direct line of sight signals from other GNSS satellites while a four element array antenna facing downward is the Nadir antenna having high gain, directional beam width and left hand circular polarisation (LHCP)