2017 International Workshop on Antenna Technology: Small Antennas, Innovative Structures, and Applications (iWAT)

Smart Antennas for Satellite Communications on the

Move
Qi Luo, Steven Gao
School of Engineering and Digital Arts,
University of Kent
Canterbury, UK
q.luo@kent.ac.uk; s.gao@kent.ac.uk

Abstract—Smart antennas are important for SATCOM on- nulls against interference sources. Compared to the reflector
the-move (SOTM) because they can increase the channel capacity antennas, smart antennas have the capability to scan the beam
and coverage range of the communication systems. Firstly, this electronically with high pointing accuracy. The beam of the
paper briefly reviews the state-of-art on the smart antenna design array can be steered in microseconds, thus with only one smart
for SOTM applications. Different types of antenna for SOTM are
discussed. Then, two design examples from the recent
antenna different satellites can be tracked simultaneously and
collaborated research work from the University of Kent are the handover can be done seamlessly.
presented. One is a Ka-band low-cost beam scanning folded
reflectarray. This reflectarray uses the dual-polarized slot Depending on how the beams of the smart antennas are
antenna with multi-layered PCB structure as the unit cell and steered, generally speaking, the smart antennas can be
scans its beam within large angle range. Another design example categorized as the beam-switching smart antenna and the
is a Ku-band low cost dual polarized reconfigurable reflectarray adaptively beam-steering smart antenna. If the complex
with single bit phase control by using PIN diodes. For both weights of the array element are pre-defined and the antenna
design examples, measurement results are given to show their system has a limited number of fixed beam patterns, the smart
good beam scanning performance.
antenna is called beam-switching smart antenna. On the
Keywords—smart antennas; antennas; reflectarray; SATCOM another hand, if the complex weight of each array element can
be adjusted adaptively and the shaped beam of the smart
antenna can be steered continuously within certain angle
I. INTRODUCTION
range, then such a system is called adaptively beam-steering
There is an increasing need for mobile broadband satellite smart antenna. For both types of smart antenna, either
communications in recent years. SATCOM On-the-Move analogue beam-forming or digital beam-forming can be
(SOTM) has attracted much research interests, and there are employed. Fig.1 shows the concept of using the smart antenna
many Commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) mobile terminals to have a two-way communicate with the satellite (operating
providing the SOMTM services available in the market. As a in X, Ku, and Ka frequency bands) in a SOTM scenario.
key component for the mobile terminals, an antenna array with
beam scanning capability is required. For example, on the
Satcom user terminals, the antenna is usually required to be
able to scan its beam within a large angle range in order to
guarantee the coverage availability [1].
X
/R
Tx

Tx

Traditionally, reflector antennas with mechanical steering are

/R
TX/R

used for the satellite ground stations, because of its advantages

X

of high gain, and broad operation bandwidth [2]. However,

they are always bulky and can only track the satellites by
mechanical movement, which make them impossible to
communicate with multiple satellites simultaneously or
perform seamless handover unless more than one reflector are
employed.

Smart antenna, also known as an adaptive array, is a key Fig. 1. The scenario of using smart antennas to communicate with multiple
technology for advanced wireless systems, such as satellite mobile terminals
communications, synthetic aperture radars, terrestrial mobile
communications and wireless local area networks [3]. It can This paper is organized as follows. Section II reviews the
significantly increase the throughput of wireless state-of-art of the different types of antenna for SOTM
communication systems, by electronically steering the application. Section III presents two design examples
maximum radiation towards the desired users while forming including one wide beam scanning folded reflectarray and a

978-1-5090-5177-9/17/$31.00 ©2017 IEEE

 2017 International Workshop on Antenna Technology: Small Antennas, Innovative Structures, and Applications (iWAT)

low cost dual polarized reconfigurable reflectarray with single In [8], a compact receive-only steerable antenna for
bit phase control by using PIN diodes. Section III concludes automotive platforms in Ku-band (10.70 – 12.75 GHz) was
this paper. reported. Analogue beam-forming was used, and it has a
customized GaAs-MMIC that contains a two-stage LNA, a 4-
bit phase shifter and all the necessary digital logic to control
II. A REVIEW OF SOTM ANTENNAS the phase shifter. 90o hybrid was used to switch the
This section reviews the recent progress in the design of polarization of the antenna. A Ka-band array antenna with
SOTM antennas. Special interests are given to the planar array digital beam-forming was presented in [9]. This design
antennas, which have a low profile, low mass, and can be exploits the advantages of an array with an orthogonal grid
easily integrated to the mobile terminals. In general, the and a fixed inter-element distance, then decompose the phase
antennas for SOTM application can be divided into three control in two independent phase settings for the two
types: mechanical scanning, electrically scanning, and hybrid orthogonal planes. Thus, the overall computation load is
scanning. reduced. This antenna was fabricated by using low
temperature co-fired ceramics (LTCC), and it has 17 LTCC
Mechanical Scanning layers with 18 conductive layers. Fig.3 shows the photos of
In the applications where fast tracking is not required, using this fabricated array antenna. In [10], a highly integrated
mechanically beam steerable smart antenna provides the most analogue beam-forming reflectarray transmit/receive
economical solution. A low cost and compact Ka-band mobile architecture was presented. This antenna has a multilayer
SATCOM terminal was presented in [4]. Fig.2 shows the structure where microstrip antennas, SiGe MMICs including
concept of this mobile SATCOM terminal. In this design, the four RF channels each, and the digital control circuits were
radiating layer is divided into smaller subarrays, and a integrated together. Ref [6, 11] provide more reported designs
polarizer consisting of parasitic dipoles is used to convert the including the commercial available products.
linear polarization to circular polarizations. It has a 2-axes
mechanical scanning in azimuth (0o-360o) and elevation (5o-
90o) planes. Another example is a commercially available
terminal for the aero mobile applications [5]. This antenna
system consists of the antenna array, a control unit and
programmable servo-motors that can be used for azimuth and
elevation position controlling. It is reported that this antenna
has elevation coverage from 0º to 75º and 360º continuous
coverage in the azimuth plane. Several commercial products
of X, Ku, Ka-band SOTM terminals are available and the
readers can refer to [6, 7] for more details.

Fig. 3. The fabricated demonstrator developed in the SANTANA project [9]

Hybrid Scanning
Electrical scanning provides a fast tracking; however, the
related cost (e.g. phase shifters) is high, especially for
millimeter wave frequencies. Therefore, hybrid method, which
combines both the mechanical rotations and the electrical
steering into the design, become a compromised solution.

In [12], one array antenna with mechanical rotation at both

azimuth and elevation planes while electronically scan the
beam in the elevation plane, was presented. This smart
Fig. 2. The concept of the Ka-band SOTM terminal developed in the antenna can provide a wide-angle reception. The 2×2 linearly
LOCOMO project [4] polarized patch were arranged in a sequentially rotated
position to generate the CP radiation. There are 17 subarrays
Electrical Scanning used for either RHCP or LHCP operation and for each
Mechanical steering is a low-cost solution, but it suffers from polarization, the antenna arrays are placed in five consecutive
the low tracking speed. The adaptive beam-steering smart panels with certain tilt angle. Another good example of hybrid
antennas can continuously steer the beam to the desired scanning is presented in [13], where the hybrid tracking
directions and shape the beam to maximize the link budget method relies on mechanical azimuth and electronically
with sophisticated signal processing algorithms. SOTM switched elevation tracking.
antennas with either analogue beam-forming or digital beam-
forming were reported [8-10].
 2017 International Workshop on Antenna Technology: Small Antennas, Innovative Structures, and Applications (iWAT)

can improve the impedance matching when the antenna scans

to large angles.

Fig. 4. The exploded isometric view of the intelligent antenna system

developed in [12]

III. ANTENNA DESIGN EXAMPLES

A. Ka-band Folded reflectarray with larger scan angle Fig.6: The exploded view of the reflectarray unit cell [14]
To make the most use of the electrical beam scanning smart
antenna, a planar antenna array with large scan angle is Fig.7 shows the measured far-field radiation patterns for the
usually required to be equipped. Here, we present our recent reflectarray with scan angles of 0o, 45o, and 60o in E-planes. It
work progress on the design of an SOTM Ka-band reflectarray is observed that the main beam of the reflectarray can be
antennas of large scan angles [14, 15]. This reflectarray can steered to 60o with low sidelobe level. There is about 3-dB
scan its beam to ±60 degrees in the hemisphere. The gain drop when the reflectarray scans to 60o which is due to
configuration of this folded reflectarray is shown in Fig.5. As the reduction of the effective radiating aperture.
shown, this reflectarray consists of a planar microstrip slot
antenna array and a dielectric polarizer. Behind each radiating 10
E Plane (Phi=0deg)

element, its interface allows it to incorporate the 0

0deg
45deg

transmit/receive unit with phase/amplitude control. -10

60deg

-20
Amplitude(dB)

-30

-40

-50

-60

-70
-180 -150 -120 -90 -60 -30 0 30 60 90 120 150 180
Angle(Degree)

Fig.7: The measured far-field radiation patterns of the reflectarray

at different scan angles at 30GHz

Fig. 5. The configuration of the folded reflectarray with large scan angle B. Ku-band Reconfigurable Reflectarrays With Single-Bit
Phase Resolution
The unit cell of the reflectarray is a dual linearly polarized slot In this subsection, we present a low cost dual polarized
antenna. Fig.6 shows the layouts of this unit cell. The ring-slot reconfigurable reflectarray [16]. The motivation of this work
was printed on a 0.38mm thick Rogers RO3003 substrate is to reduce the cost of the conventional reflectarray further
(Ɛr=3). Rogers 3001 (Ɛr = 2:28) bonding films were used to by using PIN diodes to provide single-bit phase resolution
bond the layers together. To ensure that the antenna element is (0o/180o), while maintains the good beam-scanning
suitable for future integration with the MMIC, which is placed performance with dual polarizations. By doing so, the high
at layers below the radiating element, striplines were chosen to cost related in phase shifters can be avoided.
load the slot antenna. Then, a vertical RF transition from
stripline to coaxial can be employed to connect the stripline of The configuration of the unit cell is shown in Fig.8. It has a
the slot antenna to the MMIC. A 0.25mm thick Rogers multilayer PCB structures including an air gap layer, resonant
RO3003 substrate was used as the radome of the slot antenna, patches and the coaxial DC voltage circuit. Rogers Duroid
An additional dielectric grid made of 1.57mm thick Rogers 5880 substrates ( r = 2.2) of different thicknesses were used.
RO3203 (Ɛr = 3:02) was added on top of the radome, which The unit-cell has four parts: 1) the impedance match layer
(0.508-mm thick); 2) the polarization-turning layer (0.508-
mm thick); 3) the coupling layer (0.787-mm thick), and 4) the
 2017 International Workshop on Antenna Technology: Small Antennas, Innovative Structures, and Applications (iWAT)

RF-DC isolation circuitry. Four PIN diodes are placed on four

microstrip lines in the polarization-turning layer to obtain a ACKNOWLEDGMENT
single pole double throw (SPDT) configuration, which The authors thank the FLExwin project partners (Airbus,
supplies two states for reflecting the linearly polarized Germany; University of Ulm; University of Calabria, etc). The
incident wave. Different orientations of two pairs (each with authors also thank Mingtao Zhang who contributed to the Ku
two PIN diodes) fixed on the radial line can turn the linear band reflectarray work. This work is funded by EPSRC
polarization of the incident wave into its orthogonal linear project ‘Lead Niobate-based Tunable Dielectrics for Smart
polarization. Microwave and Millimeter-wave Systems’.

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