Patent — available for licensing
High Performance, All-Metal X-Band Patch Antenna
A NASA invention available to explore as a licensing opportunity.
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.