6th World Congresses of Structural and Multidisciplinary Optimization

3. Introduction Although existing SATCOM antennas provide broad pattern coverage, they are still too large (15”-30”), heavy and bulky and therefore not quite portable. The goal of this paper is to address the existing need of replacing bulky and often inefficient antennas currently used for satellite communications at UHF frequencies (224-317MHz) with a particular emphasis on the higher 290317MHz band and a target antenna size no larger than 6 inches. The challenge is to miniaturize the antenna and still retain its bandwidth with a satisfactory gain performance. Our previous studies on metamaterials indicate that properly designed dielectrics or a combination of different materials can lead to designs which have greater bandwidth and small size [1]. Nevertheless, the focus so far has been on narrowband antennas and on two material compositions, high contrast ceramic-polymer mixtures. Here, our goal is to deliver a satisfactory antenna performance for SATCOM applications in terms of size and impedance matching by optimizing the metamaterial profile of the antenna, possibly with more dielectric shades, after choosing and fine-tuning the shape of an already known broadband antenna.