High-Performance Antennas for Small Satellites

Small satellites are transforming spaceflight. They enhance global communication, Earth observation, and scientific missions by making them more flexible, cost-effective and rapidly deployable. However, in terms of communication, these small platforms quickly encounter physical and technical limits: space is confined, energy is limited. At the same time, large amounts of data must be reliably transmitted within short periods when a ground station is in sight. Added to these challenges are diverse mission objectives, dynamic flight paths and the harsh environmental conditions of space, which place additional demands on communication systems.

While traditional omnidirectional antennas offer broad coverage, they rapidly reach their limits in range, antenna gain, and data throughput. Moreover, they occupy valuable space or are difficult to integrate into compact satellite structures.

This is where we come in: with our phased array antenna for the Ka-band, we provide a powerful, highly integrated solution specifically designed for the requirements of small satellites. The antenna combines high directivity with precise electronic beam steering in a scalable, modular design. It ensures stable, targeted and efficient data transmission even when energy and space are limited. As a result, the system is ideally suited to deliver the high data rates demanded by modern satellites and constellations.

Modular design for maximum flexibility

Our antenna design is based on a modular tile concept, where the tile size and count can be flexibly adapted to different requirements. The base configuration of a tile – whether used as a transmitting or receiving antenna – consists of 72 antenna elements arranged in nine rows of eight elements each. The design can either be used in its base configuration or adapted to specific satellite designs and mission requirements.

High performance in a compact design

For maximum efficiency with minimal space requirements, we rely on commercial, space-grade beamformer and amplifier chips. The active antenna aperture has a flat design (< 10 mm total thickness) and enables particularly space-saving construction by interleaving the antenna elements. Up to four beams can be utilized simultaneously via four independent RF interfaces. A serial digital interface allows programming of up to 256 different beam positions. An additional asynchronous digital control line enables fast, low-latency switching between these positions for dynamic communication scenarios with ground stations or other satellites.