Recent Developments on Reflectarray Antennas for NanoSats

This paper reports on the outcome of recent activities at Anywaves aiming at the development of a reflectarray antenna product for space missions using NanoSat platforms. These missions are particularly well suited for this product, which provides high antenna gain while occupying a reasonably small stowed volume. In an effort to industrialize the concept, a generic product definition is retained, which is suitable for both X-band and Ka-band applications. Metallic panel designs are selected to achieve a more stable thermo-mechanical behavior.

Two designs, one in X-band and another in Ka-band, are discussed with numerical results for both, as well as experimental data for the one in Ka-band. The results reported confirm the potential of the defined reflectarray antenna product to address the needs of future science and exploration missions using NanoSats.