Reflectarray Antenna

The Reflectarray Antenna is a custom-designed, flight-proven high-gain payload antenna for small satellites. Originally developed under a CNES programme and now in orbit as the world’s first commercial reflectarray antenna on a small satellite, it delivers up to 40 dBi of gain from X-band to Ka-band using foldable flat panels that replicate the performance of a parabolic reflector. It is designed for missions where high gain, broadband performance, compact stowage and deployment reliability must be achieved simultaneously. The antenna unfolds through a robust passive deployment mechanism: no motor, no electrical actuation, no software dependency. Precision-guided folding systems and locking interfaces between the central and lateral panel sections ensure that the aperture deploys to its correct geometry every time, with structural rigidity maintained throughout the mission lifetime. Passive thermal control is integrated into the design, ensuring the panel geometry remains stable across the extreme thermal gradients of orbital operations. The Reflectarray Antenna supports dual-circular polarization — it transmits or receives Left Hand and Right Hand Circular Polarization simultaneously from the same aperture. This dual-pol capability is a significant system architecture advantage: it doubles the data throughput for a given aperture size in communications applications, enables polarimetric SAR in radar applications, and provides inherent link redundancy without requiring a second antenna. The fractional bandwidth of up to 15% further extends the frequency agility available to mission designers.