Dual Band (S-X) Ground Station Antenna for Low Earth Orbit (LEO) Satellite Tracking Application

Abstract

Design and realization of a dual band, dual polarized composite monopulse tracking feed, covering S-(2.0-2.3 GHz) and X-band (7.8-8.5 GHz) is reported in this article. X-band feed is a five element monopulse feed, comprising a corrugated horn acting as the main or Sum element surrounded by four circular septum polarizers serving as tracking elements. S-band feed is a four element monopulse feed consisting of square dielectric array arranged in 2×2 configurations. Illumination efficiency of the proposed composite feed, positioned in the same Cassegrain plane, is above 90 % for both the bands. S/X composite feed is systematically designed, fabricated and experimentally characterized revealing excellent correspondence with the simulated result. The realized composite feed is installed in 7.5m antenna system at NRSC Hyderabad, ISRO, India and currently fully operational. Expected / targeted G/T of 32 dB/K is achieved with the realized antenna system. The proposed feed is highly efficient, compact, simple and costeffective, uses generic design style and perfectly suitable as ground station reflector feed antenna, meeting stringent industry specification.INDEX TERMS Monopulse feed, dual band, corrugated horn, circular septum polarizer, cassegrain, secondary pattern.

Design and Realization of an X Band Monopulse Feed Antenna for Low Earth Orbit (LEO) Satellite Ground Station

“…Considering our target requirements (Table 1), the gain of the proposed study is better than other comparable works' gain, except for [19], which has lower efciency and crosspolarization than the proposed study. Compared to similar designs [20,21], the proposed design improves the gain, efciency, and crosspolarization.…”

“…Te comparison of feed antennas with their features which are single/dual, gain, efciency, polarization, and crosspolarization is presented in Table 2. Various research studies for the single-band operation have previously been made to fnd the best feed for monopulse tracking [13] Out of available monopulse feed confgurations, four elements [19] and multimode feed [20,21] have been used depending on the application, system specifcation, and costefectiveness.…”

Design of millimeter wave broadband polarization reconfigurable horn antenna based on elliptical waveguide polarizer

“…It is the key part in the design of CP horn antenna. At present, the design methods of circular polarizer in this kind of antenna mainly include inserting metal or dielectric diaphragm in the waveguide, [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14] slotting in the waveguide, [15][16][17][18][19][20] chamfering in the waveguide, 21 loading ridge structure on the inner wall of the waveguide, 22 inserting multiple groups of pins in the waveguide, 23 using corrugated waveguide, 24 using elliptical waveguide 19 and by loading various kinds of artificial hypersurfaces 25,26 or anisotropic lens structures 27,28 at the online polarization antenna terminals. In Shu et al, 18 a broadband dual-CP antenna is designed by combining the circular polarizer with symmetrical slot structure loaded on the inner wall and the orthogonal mode transducer.…”

Conceptual Design of a Semi-Dual Polarized Monopulse Antenna by Computer Simulation

“…Therefore, it becomes necessary to design a monopulse antenna that can mitigate the polarization mismatch by using dual-linear or dual-circular polarizations. Dual-polarized monopulse methods have traditionally been used in tracking rockets [12] and satellites [13]. In recent years, there have been research efforts focused on the use of dual-polarized monopulse techniques for mitigating angle jamming in missile seekers [14].…”