A Review of Antennas for Picosatellite Applications

Table 1

Summary of the operating frequencies, data rate, and antenna gains for picosatellite applications.

Types of application	Operating frequency band		Communication performances
	Application-specific frequency (range)	Communication with ground station (range)	Required transmitting gain	Required data rate
Earth and climate observation [9]	L-band (1-2 GHz), Millimeter wave	VHF band (130–170 MHz), UHF band (400–450 MHz), S-band (2–4 GHz)	Minimum 17 dB	More than 9600 bps
Space weather forecasting [21]	X-band (8–12 GHz)	S-band (2–4 GHz)	26 dB & 37 dB	Up to 400 kbps
Space research [24]	X-band (8–12 GHz)	VHF band (130–170 MHz), UHF band (400–450 MHz)	17 dB & 37 dB	More than 32 kbps
Communications [25]	K-band (18–27 GHz)	K-band (18–27 GHz)	45 dB	More than 6 Mbps