Characterization of Millimeter-wave 3D-printed Antennas For CubeSat Applications Using a Robotic Antenna Range

Published

February 21, 2017

Author(s)

Joshua A. Gordon, David R. Novotny, Ronald C. Wittmann, Michael H. Francis, Jeffrey R. Guerrieri, Alexandra Curtin, Miranda L. Butler, Albin Gasiewski, Lavanya Periasamy

Abstract

3D printing is finding applications across many areas and may also be a useful technology for antenna fab- rication for CubeSats. However, the quality of an antenna produced using 3D printing must be well understood if this technology can be relied upon. We present far-field an- tenna pattern results obtained using the spherical near-field method for an antenna 3D-printed out of pure metal alloy. These measurements were performed at 118.7503 GHz on a corrugated conical feed horn used in the optical train of the CubeSat radiometer, PolarCube. The NIST configurable robotic antenna range CROMMA was used to perform both pattern and extrapolation measurements. The use of coor- dinated robotics in CROMMA enabled rapid antenna char- acterization and the ability to perform both near-field and in-situ extrapolation measurements at mm-wave frequencies with a single system and single alignment.

Citation

IEEE Antennas and Propagation Magazine

Pub Type

Journals

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Keywords

cube satellite, radiometer, near-field, millimeter-wave, pattern, robotics, far-field

Citation

Gordon, J. , Novotny, D. , Wittmann, R. , Francis, M. , Guerrieri, J. , Curtin, A. , Butler, M. , Gasiewski, A. and Periasamy, L. (2017), Characterization of Millimeter-wave 3D-printed Antennas For CubeSat Applications Using a Robotic Antenna Range, IEEE Antennas and Propagation Magazine, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=920681 (Accessed December 8, 2023)