Using Foldable Structures To Guide Microwaves

Origami and space exploration might not seem like they have much in common, but the traditional paper-folding technique solves one massive problem for space exploration missions – volume. Satellites and probes that launch in rocket housings are constrained by very restrictive requirements about their physical size, and options for assembling larger structures in orbit are limited to say the least. Anything that can fold up like an origami structure and then expand out to reach a fully functional size is welcome in the space community, and a new paper published in Communications Engineering by Xin Ning of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) and his lab describes a novel use case for the idea – electromagnetic waveguides.