The Philippine Space Agency (PhilSA) Advanced Degrees for Accelerating Space R&D and Applications Scholarships scholar Raynell Inojosa earned recognition for his doctoral research on antenna design for nanosatellite applications during the IEEE Transdisciplinary-Oriented Workshop for Emerging Researchers (TOWERs) conference held at the Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology in Tokyo on November 26.

The IEEE TOWERs is an annual conference of university students and young researchers (including academic professors, scientists and working professionals) in Japan supported by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Young Professionals Affinity Group from Kansai, Sendai, and Tokyo.

Inojosa’s research, titled: “Electrodynamic Analysis of a Geometry-Oriented Antenna for Low-Earth Orbit CubeSat,” has been selected as one of the outstanding presentations. The award is given to emerging researchers with exceptional presentations shared at the annual conference.

As part of the scholarship grant, AD ASTRA financially supported Inojosa’s short-term research engagement (sandwich program) at the Laboratory of Lean Satellite Enterprises and In-Orbit Experiment (LaSEINE) and the Center for Nanosatellite Testing (CeNT) at Kyushu Institute of Technology (KyuTech) in Japan.

The testing and measurements for his research were done at these facilities under the supervision of Prof. Mengu Cho of KyuTech.

“For my research, I did a computer modeling and optimization of a 920 MHz patch antenna for low-earth orbit CubeSat integration and investigated the actual performance of a fabricated prototype when used as a CubeSat payload,” Inojosa explained.

Through his research, he hopes to come up with an innovative patch antenna design that ensures reliable, efficient, and successful communication links between a nanosatellite and a ground station terminal (GST).

Inojosa is among the first batch of PhilSA AD ASTRA Scholars. He is taking up his Ph.D. in Electronics Engineering at Batangas State University under the supervision of Celso Co. Philippine Space Agency