Comparative Study of Beamforming Techniques for VHTS Array Fed Reflector Antennas

Baldominos, Alejandro; Segneri, Andrea; Mengali, Alberto; Fonseca, Nelson J. G.; Goussetis, George

doi:10.23919/eucap53622.2022.9769174

Cited by 4 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…For these reasons, reconfigurable GEO satellites under development mostly rely on imaging array configurations, the preferred configuration being single-offset reflector geometries where all feeds contribute to all beams [17]. These antenna solutions bring challenges to the beamforming stage, as the computational effort is also "magnified" by the optics [18]. These configurations lead to feed clusters with a number of elements which is typically less than the number of beams to produce, but still in the order of a few hundreds, thus requiring some innovation to achieve acceptable mass and volume.…”

Section: Current Trends In Rf Front-ends For Communication Satellitesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…3), leading to new challenges in terms of signal processing and resource management [19]. The antenna system on board of each satellite is likely an imaging array configuration comparable in complexity to the one described in [18], having a reflector of 3 m in diameter or larger and a feed system of about 500 elements, in line with current onboard processor capabilities. The typical beam diameter of these satellites with global coverage is in the order of 0.5°or larger.…”

Section: Current Trends In Rf Front-ends For Communication Satellitesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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How 3D-Printing Is Changing RF Front-End Design for Space Applications

et al. 2023

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3D-printing is leading to a major transformation in many industrial and application sectors, ranging from medical to aerospace. In the space sector, 3D-printing has firstly been adopted for the development of structural and thermal parts, such as brackets and heat pipes. In more recent years, thanks to improvements in precision and surface roughness, 3D-printing technologies have steadily been investigated also for the development of radio frequency components and advanced payloads. Indeed, the unique features of 3D-printing, including the free-form capability and the ease for customization, make these manufacturing technologies very appealing in the development of complex radio-frequency front-ends for space applications, including New Space constellations and next generation software-defined communication satellites. They also enable a drastic simplification of mechanical designs by reducing the number of interfaces and assembling screws of large radio-frequency front-ends, thus leading to significant mass savings and higher integration. This paper briefly reports on recent advances in 3D-printing that have been carried out according to the current trends in radio-frequency front-ends for satellite communications.

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Section: Current Trends In Rf Front-ends For Communication Satellitesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Current Trends In Rf Front-ends For Communication Satellitesmentioning

confidence: 99%

How 3D-Printing Is Changing RF Front-End Design for Space Applications

et al. 2023

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“…This solution was introduced in [ 63 ] and proved useful for parametric studies using different beam-forming techniques and linear precoding in different multi-beam scenarios. A comparative study of different techniques to compute the elements excitation W was presented in [ 64 ]. The study is focused on direct evaluation techniques in order to provide a rapid estimation of the weights and reduce the computational cost.…”

Section: Applications Of the Toolmentioning

confidence: 99%

“… Interpolation of far-field grid points with a subset of them in amplitude ( a ) and phase ( b ). This results have been obtained using the antenna architecture described in [ 64 ]. …”

Section: Figurementioning

confidence: 99%

HERAS: A Modular Matlab Tool Using Physical Optics for the Analysis of Reflector Antennas

Baldominos

Mercader-Pellicer

Goussetis

et al. 2023

Sensors

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HERAS is a tool developed in Matlab for the analysis of reflector antennas using physical optics (PO) theory. Its graphical user interface (GUI) and source code are freely available for educational and research purposes. It has the necessity of being a flexible tool to provide adaptability to system engineering requirements and can also be of interest to antenna engineers working on the design of reflector antennas. Due to the increasing demand of broadband services, satellite communications systems are becoming highly complex in order to meet connectivity requirements. To fully exploit the benefits of these systems, multidimensional optimisations are crucial, which call for an efficient estimation of the coverage characteristics. Reflector-based solutions are one of the preferred architectures for very high-throughput satellite (VHTS) systems. A detailed description of HERAS is presented in this paper which has been validated with available commercial software packages. In addition, some examples are described in which the tool has been used for the efficient estimation of VHTS systems performance.

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