Automated Synthesis of a Lunar Satellite Antenna System

Abstract

In recent years, spacecraft requirements have trended toward smaller, lighter, and less expensive systems with more capabilities. At the same time, demands on the communication systems have increased, including faster data rates, lower power budgets, reduced system volume, and smaller link margins. The combination of these factors has posed numerous engineering challenges for antenna system designers, often forming complex tradeoffs among design parameters such as bandwidth, pattern control, beamwidth, and antenna size. In this paper, we show how a challenging set of antenna requirements were met for NASA's recent LADEE mission. We focus on the difficulties inherent in the requirements for both omnidirectional and medium gain antennas, both in S-band. We present techniques used to develop a requirements-compliant system based on our research in antenna synthesis methods. Compared to the conventional antennas considered by NASA for the mission, the antennas we developed yielded 65% increased downlink coverage and 44% cost savings for the mission. The deployed flight antennas were the only antennas on the mission and performed above expectations during the 8-month mission, which concluded in April 2014.

Antenna design using dynamic multi‐objective evolutionary algorithm

“…In this section, the S-band omnidirectional antenna on the lunar satellite for a NASA mission called the lunar atmosphere and dust environment explorer (LADEE) [6] was optimised.…”

“…As a typical EA, genetic algorithms (GAs) have been successfully applied in the antenna design problems [2]. Two most appealing examples from the antenna design domain using GAs are the design of X-band antennas for the NASA Space Technology 5 spacecraft [5] and the S-band antennas for the NASA lunar atmosphere and dust environment explorer [6]. Wen et al [7] used GA to obtain a wide-angle scanning and low sidelobe level (SLL) microstrip phased array.…”

Fully Metallic Dual-Band 3-D Wire Antenna for Wi-Fi and Wi-Max Applications

“…It covered the frequency band 300 MHz to 15 GHz with a VSWR below 4.5. More achievements that target desired space coverage, CP, and high gain were accomplished in several works [30][31][32][33][34][35][36].…”

Wideband Circularly Polarized 3D Wire Antenna for Wi-MAX Applications

“…It also gives a higher degree of freedom of the geometrical shape of the antenna, which makes it a promising and suitable solution for problems that present very conflicting requirements. Among many three dimensional antennas design, G. Hornby and J. Lohn presented in [3]- [5] a threedimensional wire antenna topology that has high performances in term of gain, space coverage, and polarization. It consists of six straight connected segments oriented arbitrary in space and operates above a ground plane.…”