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Issued patent

High Performance, All-Metal X-Band Patch Antenna

An issued NASA patent from the Technology Transfer catalog.

View at technology.nasa.gov
Media from NASA Technology Transfer

About this technology

Overview

Innovators at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center have developed an all-metal, X-band patch antenna with built in choke rings and a polarizer circuit to meet the stringent requirements of high-precision space navigation antennas for the Geodetic Reference Instrument Transponder for Small Satellites (GRITSS) mission. GRITSS required a low-gain antenna with strong multipath mitigation and a stable phase center. Typical dielectric-patch antennas can be high-loss, susceptible to manufacturing variability, have limited power handling ability, and are temperature sensitive. Compared to commercially available path antennas, NASA’s antenna is more rugged, provides a high front-to-back ratio, mitigates multipath signal interference, and is capable of higher power handling. NASA’s X-band antenna was designed to be mounted on a CubeSat but has the potential of being mounted on terrestrial aircraft and vehicles for either communication or radar applications.