Deployable Rigid-Flexible Tightly Coupled Dipole Array (RF-TCDA)

An origami-based Tightly Coupled Dipole Array (TCDA) is proposed for small satellite applications. The array formed by a two-layered structure using rigid and flexible substrates to enable accordion-like folding. TCDA operates across 0.4-2.4 GHz with VSWR < 3 at broadside 0.6-2.4 when scanning down 45∘ in the E-, D-, H-plane. 8 × prototype was fabricated Kapton Polyimide FR4 tested verify bandwidth gain of origami array. demonstrated be packable, low-profile, lightweight (only 1.1kg). Notably, packed, has one-dimensional size reduction 75%. As will discussed, packing compression made possible eliminating vertical PCB boards incorporating balun feeds within dipole layer. To our knowledge, this one first foldable, low profile, low-scanning ultra-wideband arrays literature.