Design of Cost-Optimised Active Receive Array Antenna for Mobile Satellite Terminals

Abstract

A low profile scanning antenna for reception of S-DMB is under development in the frame of the ESA funded project "Cost-Optimised High Performance Active Receive Phase Array Antenna for Mobile Terminals (CORPA)". The aforementioned project objectives are the design, prototyping and testing of a complete antenna based on digital beam forming (DBF) providing multimedia reception within the S-DMB system. The antenna is able to electronically scan a circularly polarised beam in the range 8 to 72 degrees, covering DMB satellites and including some margin for vehicle tilt. A conformal, phased array antenna based on DBF has been selected providing an attractive solution for such medium gain antenna. Moreover, DBF allows avoiding a complex phase calibration and provides a good auto-tracking performance in a harsh environment in terms of multipath and interference.

Test and qualification of a Fault Tolerant FPGA based Active Antenna System for space applications

“…The validity of equation 5 is has been demonstrated in reference [13]. ( Re (5) The value for the basic DBF design is obtained with the previous methodology is 0.20. The value for the Fault Tolerant design is 0.005.…”

“…Analog Beam Forming (ABF) circuits are being replaced by Digital Beam Forming (DBF) techniques. The interest in the development of DBF systems for space applications is growing up quickly [1][2][3][4][5][6]. Complex DBF algorithms can be implemented and an Active Antenna Array can be obtained.…”