Method of designing a low cost multibeam phased array antenna for communicating with geostationary satellites

摘要

A method for electronically scanning a predetermined geostationary orbital arc segment around the earth with an antenna system. The antenna system includes a planar array. A number of fixed electronic squints is selected. Lengths of the total plurality of fixed delay line lengths are generated for the planar array based on the number of fixed electronic squints. All of the antenna elements in the planar array for the mobile earth station are fitted with the generated lengths. The orbital arc segment is electronically scanned with a single linear scan with the planar array. This method is extendable to the case of multiple beams by adding additional phase shifters at each column and keeping the number of fixed line lengths the same, regardless of the number of additional beams.