Abstract
In this paper, we suggest the antenna placement optimization method for the micro-satellite in consideration of an operation condition of the satellite and its earth station using a genetic algorithm (GA) for two purposes, maximizing a margin of its link design and reducing the burden from the communication system to the other subsystems of the satellite by reducing a control of the satellite's attitude or a gimbal of the antenna for an antenna's pointing to the earth station. We defined an evaluation function that calculates the mean bit rate in its design life expressed in the follow parameter, its transmitter antenna gain in the direction of the earth station and a free space propagation loss as a weighting. For optimizing, we consider to maximize this function's value, that is equal to maximize a mean C/N0 in design life. We adapted this optimization method to an amateur band antenna of a 50kg class micro-satellite called TSUBAME as its validation example. This optimization improved the margin of its link design about 2 times than a former model, its flight model.
