ANTENNA WHICH ASSURES HIGH SPEED DATA RATE TRANSMISSION LINKS BETWEEN SATELLITES AND BETWEEN SATELLITES AND GROUND STATIONS

Abstract: Antenna composed of a number of subarray radiating elements, according to an aperiodical geometry, which assures connections between satellites and between satellites and ground stations. The invention offers substantially advantages on previous techniques, essentially due to its aperiodical structure, through which it is possible to eliminate possible interference acting on the connection. In fact the possible presence of the array grating lobes during the array beam(s) steering in the angular sector of interest is reduced, i.e. the presence of a grating lobe within the field of view which can cause interference with another low orbiting satellite is avoided, so as to improve reception quality characteristics. The invention belongs to the field of microwave antennas and can preferably be employed in space-borne systems, due to its capacity to solve the problem of eliminating the presence of grating lobes in the field of view. This invention can be adopted even in mobile, fixed, civil and military radar systems. The antenna is essentially formed by a subarray structure having an aperiodical array configuration.

Description: ANTENNA WHICH ASSURES HIGH SPEED DATA RATE TRANSMIS¬ SION LINKS BETWEEN SATELLITES AND BETWEEN SATELLITES AND GROUND STATIONS. DESCRIPTION The invention relates an antenna formed by a set o: subarrays arranged in accordance with an aperiodical geometry and such to permit a perfect link between satellites and between satellites and ground sta¬ tions. The most innovative aspects of this invention' are the aperiodical configuration of the subarrays and its application to space borne systems. If this aspect seems to* be negligible, please note the fact that the invention's ingenuity establisheα this configuration which introduces such advantege on previous solutions for satellites that the inven¬ tor has correctly thought of covering it by a patent. In fact, in the field of phased array antennas, where elementary radiators of some wave lengths dimensions are utilized, one of the most obvious problems was the presence of the grating lobes during the scanning of the beam, i.e. a graing lobe which enters into the field of view of a satellite in low orbit, deteriora¬ ting the reception quality characteristics. SUBSTITUTESHEET It is well known that an half array beam scan angle in the range of ten to thirteen degrees for the link between a geostationary satellite and a low orbit sa¬ tellite is necessary; in order to keep the radio fre- quncy link (as the satellite orbits at an altitude of 36000 kilometers) we need to avoid that in said field of view undesired interference effects due to grating lobes, arise during the connection. In its preferred application, this invention pertains to a satellite borne system, but it can be employeα in other fields in which similar problems have to be solved. In the specific application presently preferred by the inventor, said antenna is particularly suitable for application to systems interconnecting satellites and to systems interconnecting satellites and ground stations. The low orbit satellite transmits data at high speed and these data are received by the satellite in a geostationary orbit, and are then transmitted to the ground. Due to low orbiting satellite movement, the geosta¬ tionary satellites must be able to provide the con¬ nection with the low orbit satellite throughout the whole field of view and the geostationary satellite must position the receiving/transmitting beam in any angular position inside a sector of interest ten de¬ gree radius presented by a circle. The invention will now be described, for illustrative and non limitative purposes, with reference to the attached drawings. Fig. 1 Example of a possible aperiodical configura¬ tion of an array antenna. Fig. 2 Schematic representation of a possible mi- crostrip element. Fig. 3 Radiation pattern of an aperiodical array antenna, where the suppression of the undesired lobe periodicity can be seen. Fig. 4 Example of a traditional periodical struc- ture. Fig. 5 Radiation pattern of a periodical array an¬ tenna in which the undesired periodic lobe at the li¬ mit of the angular sector of interest is visible. With the presented invention it is possible to utili- ze single radiating elements in any configuration. This makes possible to obtain very good values ■ for the efficiency of the radiator, as it is possible to choose a distance at will, between the radiating ele¬ ments(for example patches) which form the radiator and such as to minimize the degradation of the elec- trie performances due to the coupling effect between the above mentioned radiating elements . This layout offers ease of manufacturing the power division network which guarantees adequate exitation coefficients for any single radiating element, as in the version preferred by the inventor, the radiator is composed by eight patches . With a same minimum distance of grating lobes from the main lobe, this kind of structure allows to redu- ce the number of subarrays/radiators which constitute the array, also keeping constant the total area of the array, as its aperiodicity guarantees the possi¬ bility to utilize a major area for each radiator. It is a well known fact that the implementation of an active or passive antenna requires a lot of devices, some of which may be active, or passive, connected with the output of each radiator. Thus, there is the opportunity to decrease the number of radiator, with consequent reduction of manύfactu- ring time and costs .

Claims: CLAIMS 1. Antenna particularly suitable in the satellite field, consisting essentially of a subarray, charac¬ terized by the fact that it can be preferably confi¬ gured into a rectangle positioned according to an a- periodical criterium, near to each other and such that they fill the area perfectly. 2. Antenna particularly suitable for the application to the satellite field, as the claim 1, essentially formed by a given number of subarrays, characterized by the fact that each subarray can be made in any shape, even rectangular and in addition, can be sha¬ ped by a given number of radiating elements, prefera¬ bly in the form of patches, (photoetched radiating elements, for instance in the number of eight. 3. Antenna, as per claim 1 and 2, characterized by the fact that it can be applied to any system where it is mandatory that during the beam scanning posi¬ tion*, a grating lobe does not enter or must at least be kept as far away as possible from the field of view. SUBSTITUTE SHEET

Inventors: RUSSO PASQUALE, RUSSO, PASQUALE
Applicants: SPACE ENG SRL, SPACE ENGINEERING S.R.L.
Application year: 1991
Main classification: H01Q21
IPC codes: H01Q21