Circularly Polarized Lunar Regolith Simulant Antenna for Future Communication and Remote Sensing in Lunar Environment

This letter presents a novel substrate with lunar regolith simulant as a major material that closely resembles the properties of the lunar regolith. It aims to support the realization of antennas as telecommunication and remote sensing infrastructures that can serve communication and lunar observation services on the moon. Lunar regolith simulant substrate has a low-measured dielectric constant (εr) of 2.08 and a dissipation factor (tan-δ) of 0.00527. The 2 × 2 CP antennas work at a center frequency of 6.175 GHz, use two-staked substrates, the serial-sequential-rotation (SSR) technique, and have a total size of 70 × 70 × 4 mm3. The antenna has a measured broad impedance bandwidth of 1.98 GHz (32%), an axial ratio bandwidth of 1.06 GHz (17%), and a peak gain of 11.6 dBic. The measured half beamwidth in the E-plane and H-plane are achieved at 82° and 81°, respectively. The antenna in full circularly polarized polarimetric modes is subjected to experimental scattering tests for the applications of communication and remote sensing. The measured scattering matrix is identical to the theoretical scattering matrix. The result shows that the lunar regolith has great potential as an antenna substrate to support future telecommunication and remote sensing infrastructure in the lunar environment.