Polarization Re-Configurable Antenna with Increase Gain for Small Satellites

Future small satellites require the development of reconfigurable antennas. Designing such antennas, especially single port patch antennas with circular polarization is a challenging task. Therefore, we propose both right-hand/left-hand circularly polarized (RHCP/LHCP) antenna which can reconfigure. The proposed antenna follows patch topology with E-shape that is single-layer and single-feed with two RF switches. The switches can alter the polarization in real-time. We also show various properties of the proposed antenna, such as radiation pattern, impedance matching, axial ratio, and bandwidth through simulations and measurements. The proposed model shows excellent performance and agrees well with the measurements. The performance of the antenna shows an effective bandwidth of 2.45 GHz–2.82 GHz with a maximum gain of 9.88 dB at 2.55 GHz. The symmetry of the antenna radiation is preserved by switching between the LHCP and RHCP polarization modes.