Antennas can be regarded as structures facilitating the accelerating currents to radiate and vice-versa. The characteristics of antennas mounted on other structures vary drastically from that of the standalone ones because of the induced currents on the structure. Small satellites are a good example of such structures. The antenna characteristics are often simulated using commercial software by incorporating the details of such structures. A novel method of obtaining an approximate radiation pattern of conformal wire-antennas on such small structures is proposed. This method only uses the radial (or longitudinal) components of the quasi-static fields obtained using electrostatic and magnetostatic techniques. The same problem has also been solved using Green’s function technique. The results obtainedin the proposed method, the Green’s function approach are compared to that obtained from commercial FEM solvers.

The results of the rigorous analysis of the RF link aspects of a small satellite (New RummySAT) with limited attitude control system constrained to align one of its axis with local magnetic field in its LEO orbit is also presented.