Design and Development of Compact Printed Antennas with Phase Scanning Analysis for Satellite Communication

Abstract

Compact printed antennas such as microstrip patch antenna and printed monopole antenna have variety of advantages including conformability and cheap manufacturing. In the following M.Tech dissertation thesis, compact printed monopole antenna, microstrip patch antenna and its planar array was analyzed, designed and developed for satellite communication applications. The designs and simulations were carried out in ANSYS Electromagnetics Suite 15.0. Furthermore, dual band phase scanning analysis was demonstrated in MATLAB to check its beam steering capability. The major work of the thesis was concentrated on developing shared aperture multilayer dual polarized microstrip patch antenna at S and X-band and analyzing its phase scanning capability for ground station receiver of satellite. Two different configurations were designed and developed for the same, and array of one of the best chosen configuration was analyzed in MATLAB for phase scanning and scan blindness. In addition, variety of printed patch antennas were designed and developed for different satellite applications. Firstly, a compact microstrip patch antenna operating at C-band was developed for hand-held terminals to gather information directly from satellites. Secondly, planar array of 2 x 2 patch antennas operating at S-band was developed. This antenna was required for broadcast receiver terminal of satellite. Initially, single element of the array antenna was simulated with truncated corners to achieve RHCP and further the elements were sequentially rotated to achieve large axial ratio bandwidth. These elements were combined with Wilkinson power divider to provide better isolation between the two output ports, so that reflections from them does not lead to phase mismatch. An analysis was further done to design compact monopole antennas for IRNSS applications. Different monopoles i.e. wire monopole, meander shape monopole, and printed monopole antennas were designed and simulated using the novel technique of removing the ground plane to make it compact. Single band printed monopole antenna at C-band was designed and developed. Besides, linear polarized monopole was also designed to make it operate at two bands simultaneously.