Space Antenna Handbook

Chapter 15

Antennas for Small Satellites

Steven (Shichang) Gao¹, Keith Clark², Jan Zackrisson³, Kevin Maynard², Luigi Boccia⁴, and Jiadong Xu⁵

¹ Surrey Space Centre, University of Surrey, UK

²Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd, UK

³RUAG Aerospace, Sweden

⁴University of Calabria, Italy

⁵Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi'an, China

15.1 Introduction to Small Satellites

15.1.1 Small Satellites and Their Classification

Early satellites were small. However, with the requirements for more and more complicated functions, satellites became increasingly large and heavy. A typical telecommunication satellite nowadays has a mass of several tons. Small satellites here refer to the new generation of satellites which are not only smaller in size, faster to respond and cheaper to build, but also highly capable and reliable. This is in contrast to mainstream military and commercial satellites which are usually very large, heavy and very expensive. Small satellites recently became viable due to rapid technological developments during last decades, such as miniaturization, very large-scale integrated circuits, microprocessors, solid state memories, sophisticated software tools and manufacturing processes.

UoSAT-1 was the first modern small satellite to carry a reprogrammable on-board computer and 2D charge-coupled device (CCD) array camera (256 × 256 pixels). It was developed by university students, staff and radio amateurs and was launched in 1981 [1]. Small satellites provide ‘affordable ...