Wideband Deployable VHF Crossed Dipole Antenna Development for DEBRIS Mission

This paper discusses the development of a wideband deployable VHF Crossed Dipole antenna for a research and development project called Distributed Element Beamformer Radar for Ice and Subsurface Sounding (DEBRIS) at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The antenna consists of wide-surface petals made out of gold plated Kapton sheets held together using a stainless steel ring forming the periphery of the dipole arms. This structure has the potential to be folded and restored easily, thus resulting in a wideband deployable dipole. The antenna has been designed, fabricated and measured along with the balanced to unbalanced (balun) feed network. The VHF band presents unique challenges in the fabrication and the measurements, owing to the large antenna size and long wavelengths which are discussed in the paper.