DESIGN AND ANALYSIS OF QUADRIFILAR HELICAL ANTENNA FOR CUBE-SATS USING C-BAND FREQUENCY RANGE FOR SATELLITE COMMUNICATION

Design and analysis of quadrifilar helical antenna is presented in this paper. The proposed antenna is designed for cube-sats in the low earth and medium earth orbit applications. It is a combination of 4 helical antennas, each separated by 90o, with left-handedness and it is designed for operation at 4.5GHz. The proposed antenna has 11.11% impedance bandwidth. The antenna is designed in 2 steps to analyze its proper radiation pattern and input characteristics. The first step of designing is selection of a ground plane with perfect dimensions, which can operate at desired frequency. While the second step is to analyses the antenna performance for different helix angle using proper ground plane dimensions. The gain versus frequency curve has been obtained for desired frequency and it is showing more than 5 dB gain at resonant frequency 4.5 GHz. Thus, based on desired application proposed antenna has been designed