Author : National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
Publisher : Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN 13 : 9781722802943
Total Pages : 72 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (29 download)
Book Synopsis The 20 Ghz Circularly Polarized, High Temperature Superconducting Microstrip Antenna Array by : National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
Download or read book The 20 Ghz Circularly Polarized, High Temperature Superconducting Microstrip Antenna Array written by National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2018-07-16 with total page 72 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The primary goal was to design and characterize a four-element, 20 GHz, circularly polarized microstrip patch antenna fabricated from YBa2Cu3O(x) superconductor. The purpose is to support a high temperature superconductivity flight communications experiment between the space shuttle orbiter and the ACTS satellite. This study is intended to provide information into the design, construction, and feasibility of a circularly polarized superconducting 20 GHz downlink or cross-link antenna. We have demonstrated that significant gain improvements can be realized by using superconducting materials for large corporate fed array antennas. In addition, we have shown that when constructed from superconducting materials, the efficiency, and therefore the gain, of microstrip patches increases if the substrate is not so thick that the dominant loss mechanism for the patch is radiation into the surface waves of the conductor-backed substrate. We have considered two design configurations for a superconducting 20 GHz four-element circularly polarized microstrip antenna array. The first is the Huang array that uses properly oriented and phased linearly polarized microstrip patch elements to realize a circularly polarized pattern. The second is a gap-coupled array of circularly polarized elements. In this study we determined that although the Huang array operates well on low dielectric constant substrates, its performance becomes extremely sensitive to mismatches, interelement coupling, and design imperfections for substrates with high dielectric constants. For the gap-coupled microstrip array, we were able to fabricate and test circularly polarized elements and four-element arrays on LaAlO3 using sputtered copper films. These antennas were found to perform well, with relatively good circular polarization. In addition, we realized a four-element YBa2Cu3O(x) array of the same design and measured its pattern and gain relative to a room temperature copper array. The patterns were essentia...