Patch Antenna Arrays Beam Steering for Enhanced LEO Nanosatellite Communications

Given the growing demand of high-performance communication solutions on high-constraint Low Earth Orbit (LEO) small satellites, in this work we propose a set of designs of patch antenna arrays for CubeSats in the X band that are suitable for satellite-to-ground and Inter-Satellite Link (ISL) communications for LEO. In our analysis we consider the unit cell geometry as well as the array design as parameters. The parameter space is evaluated using the Finite Element Method (FEM) analysis software CST Microwave Studio. We transfer the designs evaluated in CST to AGI Systems ToolKit (STK) to evaluate the influence of each parameter on the link budget for different passes and attitude noise conditions. Our results show that it is possible to achieve a 12-15 dB gain in the link budget for the given scenarios. We also observe that such antenna arrays can provide satisfactory attitude inaccuracy compensation with a phase shifter quantization as low as 2 bits.