Estimating the mutual coupling of out-of-band microwave antennas installed on a nanosatellite using numerical modelling

This paper assesses the validity of using numerical modelling to estimate the out-of-band antenna coupling of microwave antennas. In this paper the out-of-band antennas modelled were installed on a 3U nanosatellite, and the coupled (or received) power, Pr was determined via two different approaches using a Method-of-Moments technique. One approach was to compute the coupled power at the receive antenna port due to a known transmit power at the transmit antenna port. The second approach involved calculating the averaged power density in a near-field region in close proximity to the receive antenna due to the transmit antenna, and an “average” effective antenna response due to out-of-band frequencies. The coupled power, determined using both approaches was compared to analytical coupling estimations, and the results were in good agreement.