Abstract
Small satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO) are typically organized as a satellite constellation. The satellite number of a LEO satellite constellation would be several hundred or even tens of thousands to realize a fully global coverage. This imposes a big challenge on ground station for satellite ordinary management and control operation. Phased array antennas are considered as attractive candidates for future satellite ground station. The primary reason is that phased array antennas can produce numbers of beams by the beamforming network thus support multiple satellites simultaneously. This paper aims to provide a tutorial-like review on phased array antennas as satellite ground station. The advantages of phased array antennas for this application are summarized by comparing them with traditional reflector antennas. Several array geometries for realizing the hemispherical coverage required for satellite tracking are presented. System architecture are given, and some considerations for engineering practice about phased array antenna based satellite ground station are also discussed.
Highlights
THE NEW ERA OF SMALL SATELLITE CONSTELLATIONSince the beginning of the new millennium, the whole aerospace community has evolved rapidly into a new era by revolutionized small satellite technologies [1,2,3]
A well-known type of small satellite is called CubeSat, which is made of several units with the fundamental size of 10 × 10 × 10 cm3 cube (1U)
To solve the aforementioned problem, phased array antennas are considered as attractive candidates for future ground station of low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite constellation
Summary
Since the beginning of the new millennium, the whole aerospace community has evolved rapidly into a new era by revolutionized small satellite technologies [1,2,3]. The main reason that making small satellites so popular is the dramatic overall cost reduction of a satellite project than ever, including shorter development time, advanced manufacturing process, and more affordable launch. Antennas of user terminals can be made as portable or hand-set to meet the link budget Such modularization and network structure of the LEO satellite constellation provides resilience as a space network. As of July 2021, 1738 satellites of the Starlink constellation have been deployed
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