Smart Antennas For Satellite Communications: Qi Luo and Steven Gao

Smart Antennas for Satellite
Communications
Qi Luo and Steven Gao
Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2542
Key Parameters of a Smart Antenna . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2543
Review on the Smart Antenna Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2547
Smart Antenna Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2551
Beam-Switching Smart Antenna . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2551
Beam-Steering Smart Antenna . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2558
Application of Smart Antennas in SatCom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2564
Smart Antennas for Satellite Earth Station Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2564
Smart Antennas for Mobile Direct Broadcast Satellite Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2570
Future Directions and Open Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2574
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2576
Abstract
Smart antennas are important for satellite communications because they can
increase the channel capacity, spectrum efficiency, and coverage range of the
communication systems. This chapter reviews the technology for smart array
antenna design with examples. Applications of smart antennas for satellite ground
stations and direct broadcast satellite systems are also presented in this chapter. A
detailed list of references is given in the end of this chapter.
Keywords
Smart antenna • Satellite communication • Array antenna • Beam forming
Q. Luo (*) • S. Gao

School of Engineering and Digital Arts, University of Kent, Canterbury, UK
e-mail: q.luo@kent.ac.uk; s.gao@kent.ac.uk
# Springer Science+Business Media Singapore 2016 2541

Z.N. Chen et al. (eds.), Handbook of Antenna Technologies,
DOI 10.1007/978-981-4560-44-3_103
2542 Q. Luo and S. Gao
Introduction
Smart antennas are antenna arrays incorporated with active microwave circuits, a
beam-forming network and signal process units. Beam forming can be performed by
controlling the complex weight of each array element or each subarray. If the
direction of arrival (DOA) algorithm is used, the beam of the smart antenna can be
adaptively adjusted by calculating the beam-forming vectors to form a beam in the
desired direction and form nulls at any undesired directions; thus, the interference
levels are reduced, and the system capacity is improved. In some literatures, smart
antennas are also mentioned as adaptive array antennas or intelligent antennas
(Bachman 1996; Chryssomallis 2000).
High data rate and seamless coverage have become the trend of the nowadays
wireless communications. With the increasing number of wireless users, to maxi-
mize the system efficiency and avoid the co-channel interferences, smart antennas
are used to replace the conventional antenna systems. With a smart antenna, a
communication system can have better signal-to-noise ratio and cover much larger
area than the system using a conventional array, especially in high-interference
environments (Chryssomallis 2000). In addition, smart antennas can increase the
overall capacity in a mobile communication network. Meanwhile, for satellite
communications (SatCom), where conventional reflector antennas are deployed for
the ground stations, there is also a trend to employ smart antennas. One smart
antenna can be used to communicate with several satellites almost simultaneously
instead of having several reflector antennas which are usually bulky and can only
track the satellites through mechanical steering.
Depending on how the beams of the smart antennas are steered, generally
speaking, the smart antennas can be categorized as beam-switching smart antenna
and adaptive beam-steering smart antenna. If the complex weights of the array
element are predefined and the antenna system has limited number of fixed beam
patterns, the smart antenna is called beam-switching smart antenna. On the 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 angular
range, then such a system is called adaptive beam-steering smart antenna. For both
types of smart antenna, either analogue beam forming or digital beam forming can be
employed. Multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO) antenna is also a form of
smart antenna. It utilizes the space diversity to achieve increased data throughput,
and there is no dedicated beam forming required for such system. Figure 1 shows a
classification for smart antennas. As can be seen, adaptive beam-steering smart
antennas with analogue beam forming can be divided into passive phased arrays
and active phased arrays. The active phased array refers to the antenna array that
each of the radiating elements has its own transmit/receive (T/R) module and the
active circuitry is integrated with the passive antenna element (Jenshan and Itoh
1994). In this chapter, only the beam-switching and beam-steering smart antenna
will be discussed. For readers who are interested in MIMO antennas, they can refer
to Kalis et al. (2014) for more details.
Smart Antennas for Satellite Communications 2543
Fig. 1 Classification of smart Smart antenna

antennas
Beam-switching Adaptively MIMO

Smart antenna Beam-steering
Smart antenna
Analogue beam Digital beam

forming(phased array) forming
Passive phased array Active phased array
Key Parameters of a Smart Antenna
Figure 2 shows a general structure of a smart antenna. A smart antenna usually

consists of an antenna array with a beam-forming network formed by microwave
circuitry. Applying advanced signal processing algorithms to the digital baseband
signals of all single antenna elements of the array, the radiation pattern of an array
can be shaped even in real time.
The array antenna is a critical component for the smart antenna. It determines the
beam-steering performance (e.g., largest beam-scanning angle), directivity, and
radiation efficiency of the antenna system. The beam-forming network and the
microwave circuit determine the beam-steering or beam-switching capability of
the phased array antenna. Therefore, the key parameters of the smart antenna can
be described from two aspects: the array antenna and the microwave circuit. Since
this chapter is more focused on the designing of antennas and it is not feasible to
cover the parameters of circuitry design, so the parameters presented below are only
related to the performance of the array antenna.
The antenna array can be either a linear or planar array, depending on the
requirements of the specific applications. In general, planar array is preferred for
the design of smart antennas so it can benefit from the advanced beam-forming
network and signal processing algorithm. Figure 3 shows four typical topologies of
the planar array antenna.
The radiation pattern of an array antenna can be expressed as the product of the
array factor (AF) times the radiation pattern of a single radiating element:
Etotal ¼ Esingle_antenna AF (1)
where Etotal represents the total electrical field of the array and Esingle_antenna is the
electrical field of a single array element. For a two-dimensional planar array with M
Beam forming network

Array
∑ antenna
output
Weight
update DoA
Fig. 2 The generic architecture of a smart antenna
d
a b
c d
Fig. 3 Three typical topologies of the planar array antenna: (a) rectangular lattice, (b) triangular
lattice, (c) hexagonal lattice (c) concentric circular array
elements placed in the X-direction and N elements placed on the Y-direction, the
array factor can be expressed as (Balanis 2005):
AF ¼ Sxm Syn (2)
where:
X
M
Sxm ¼ I m1 ejðm1Þðkdx sin θ cos φþβx Þ (3)
n¼1
X
N
Syn ¼ I 1n ejðn1Þðkdy sin θ cos φþβy Þ (4)
n¼1
The β is the progressive phase in X- or Y-direction, and the (Ѳ, φ) present the angle
of the beam in the elevation and azimuth planes, respectively. k is the propagation
constant, and I is the excitation coefficient of each element. To avoid the grating
lobes, with a rectangular lattice planar array, the space (d) between the array
elements is required to be:
λ0
d (5)
1 þ sin θMax
where θMax is the maximum scan angle of the array and λ0 is the free space
wavelength at the frequency of interest. When hexagonal or triangular lattice is
employed, with the same requirement for grating lobe free scan angle range, the
distance d can be larger, and the number of radiating element can be reduced by
about 15 % (Hansen 2009).
The directivity (D) of the array antenna is decided by the number of radiating
elements when the distance between each array element is fixed (Mailloux 2005):
4πA
D¼ eA cos θ (6)
λ2
where A is the size of the radiating aperture, and eA is the aperture efficiency of the
array. If the beam has a symmetrical pattern in both E- and H-planes, the 3-dB
beamwidth of the array antenna in radian with uniform illumination taper can be
estimated by (Mailloux 2005):
qffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
θ3dB ¼ 4π0:8662 =D (7)
The beam angle of the array antenna is determined by the complex weight on each
array elements, which is controlled by the vector modulator when analogue beam
forming is used. The vector modulator can perform the phase shifting and control the
amplitude of the RF signal through variable attenuators. In case of digital beam
90−degree
180−degree Phase
Amplitude
270−degree
Fig. 4 The amplitude and phase response diagram of an idea vector modulator
forming, there is a digital to analogue converter for each radiating element, and there
is no need of using any phase shifters.
It is desirable to have continuous phase control over 360 and continuous
amplitude control. Figure 4 shows the amplitude and phase response of an ideal
vector modulator.
However, practically the phase can only be provided discretely, and the phase
quantization errors are related to the bits of phase shifters. For example, with a 6-bit
phase shifter, 64 sets of phase can be provided with 5.625 level differences.
Moreover, random phase and amplitude errors also exist. With the phase and
amplitude errors, there will be pointing error, increased sidelobe level, and directiv-
ity decrease. When phase and amplitude errors are present, the directivity of a smart
antenna and the variance of beam pointing deviation can be estimated by (Mailloux
2005):
D P
¼ (8)
D0 1 þ δ2 þ Ф2
X
2 2
I i 2 xi 2
Δ ¼ Ф X 2 (9)
I i x2i
where D is the directivity of the array with errors, D0 is the directivity of the array
without any phase/amplitude errors, Ф is the phase error, δ is the amplitude error, Δ2
is the variance of beam pointing deviation, Ii is the amplitude of ith element
excitation, and xi is the element position divided by element spacing d. Due to the
existence of these errors, a smart antenna with analogue beam forming is required to
perform calibrations before it is equipped on the communication system.
Review on the Smart Antenna Design
Beam-Switching Smart Antennas

Beam-switching smart antennas form a limited number of fixed beams in predefined
directions. Different beams can be switched by employing a multi-port beam-
switching network or introducing RF switches on the feed network. The multi-port
beam-switching network can be realized by using the Butler matrix, which can be
designed by cascading several branch couplers with RF crossover structure. Many
beam-switching antenna arrays using the Butler matrix as the feed network have
been reported, including the design of one-dimensional array with either linearly
polarization (LP) (Han et al. 2012) or circularly polarization (CP) (Chao-Hsiung
et al. 2008; Elhefnawy and Ismail 2009; Changrong et al. 2011). In Elhefnawy and
Ismail (2009), a planar microstrip antenna array with a Butler matrix is designed to
operate at 2.4 GHz for indoor wireless dynamic environments. The CP radiation is
achieved by employing one microstrip antenna array consists of four sequentially
rotated inset-fed rectangular patch antennas.
A 60-GHz beam-switching smart antenna receiver subsystem based on substrate
integrated wave (SIW) guide technology is presented in Fan Fan et al. (2012).
Conventional 4 4 Butler matrix was used, and SIW bends were used to provide
required phase delays. In this design, there is a high-density integration of front-
end components into one single substrate, including the 4 4 slot array antenna,
Butler matrix, band-pass filter, mixer, and local oscillator (LO). It is shown in Fan
Fan et al. (2012) that four beams can be realized with the largest scan angle to 45 .
Another integrated solution is presented in Patterson et al. (2012), where a 60-GHz
active receiving switched-beam antenna array with integrated Butler matrix and
gallium arsenide (GaAs) low-noise amplifiers is demonstrated. In this design, the
beam of a 4 1 active array is controlled by GaAs single-pole-double-throw
(SPDT) switches that incorporate with the Butler matrix. The antenna array
consists of four quasi-Yagi dipole and can scan the beam up to 40 . The active
receiving switched-beam array is printed on the liquid crystal polymer (LCP)
substrate, and the measured results show that peak active gain of 27.5 dB is
achieved.
While most of these designs can only switch the beam in one plane, a modified
planar beam-switching network based on Butler matrix is presented in Moulder
et al. (2010). This beam-switching array antenna is designed for 60-GHz short-range
communication and is able to switch the beam two-dimensionally. The beam-
switching array is comprised of a 2 4 planar array and a feeding network that
Fig. 5 Demonstration of Microstrip

using 90 hybrid to feed the
antenna
array element in the same
column as presented in
Moulder et al. (2010)
0º 90º 0º 90º
90º 90º
hybrid hybrid
includes two 4 4 Butler matrices and four hybrid couplers. Each of the hybrid
couplers provides 90 phase shift between its two outputs which feeds the two
antennas at the same column, as shown in Fig. 5. With this feed network, eight
directional beams in the upper hemisphere can be obtained.
A hybrid solution, which introduces adaptive control in the beam-switching
network, is developed in Chia-Chan et al. (2010), where an 8-way Butler matrix
was used to feed a 1 8 printed patch array. The feeding network is realized by
striplines, and the overall system has a multilayered structure. Different from the
conventional design, phase shifters were introduced in the feed network, as demon-
strated in Fig. 6. The beam of the array is initially switched to a certain direction
through choosing the corresponding port of the Butler matrix, and then it can be
slightly adjusted by controlling the phase shifters. Thus, the focused beam can be
steered to cover more scan angles.
Recent progresses in the beam-switching smart antenna design with RF switches
include employing RF PIN switches or RF MEMS switches on the feed network to
provide a limited number of fixed beams up to 40 (Bayraktar et al. 2007; Jun 2011).
However, this usually leads to a complicated feed network as the result of introduc-
ing additional DC biasing network, which limits its application in compact design
especially when the number of radiating element is large.
Fig. 6 Demonstration of
introducing phase shifter in
the Butler matrix as proposed
in Chia-Chan et al. (2010)
Microstrip
antenna
Phase Phase
shifter shifter
Butler Matrix
Adaptive Beam-Steering Smart Antennas

The main disadvantage for the beam-switching smart antenna is that it can only
provide limited number of fixed beams. Instead, the adaptive beam-steering antennas
are able to continuously steer the beam to the desired directions and shape the beam
to maximize the link budget with sophisticated signal processing algorithms. In
order to adaptively shape the beam, an adaptive beam-forming network is required,
which can be either an analogue beam forming (ABF) or digital beam forming
(DBF). The ABF requires employing a large number of phase shifters and attenua-
tors to provide complex weights to the array elements. The summed signals need to
be down convert to baseband signal and then pass to the analogue/digital (A/D)
converter before sending to the signal processing unit. Most of the beam-switching
smart arrays steer the beam by controlling the input phase of the array elements only,
and they belong to analogue beam forming. Instead of using large amount of
microwave phase shifters, which are expensive and lossy, DBF uses A/D converter
and digital down converter (DDC) on each array element, and then the beam forming
can be realized digitally. However, DBF requires a large amount of A/D converters,
which have high power consumptions and need real-time signal processing. To
realize the adaptive beam forming, there are several well-defined algorithms avail-
able such as the least mean square (LMS) algorithm, the recursive least squares
(RLS) algorithm, and the constant modulus (CM) algorithm. Reader can refer to
Balanis and Ioannides (2007) for more details on these algorithms.
For mobile satellite applications, the smart antenna is required to scan the beam
within large angle range with high efficiency. For such systems, one of the key
components is an array antenna with large beam-scanning angles. Designing antenna
arrays with large scan angles is challenging and has been attracted much research
interest in recent year. Recent progresses in this field include using slot antenna
(Zhang et al. 2012), patch (Zhou et al.), and stacked patch (Chaloun et al. 2014) as
the array element, and the wide scan angle range is achieved by suppressing the
surface waves and reducing the mutual coupling between adjacent elements. One
state-of-the-art design in the field of smart antennas using ABF is reported in
Chaloun et al. (2014), where a highly integrated Ka-band transmit/receive
reflectarray (Pilz and Menzel 1998) with wide scan angle is presented. The
reflectarray has 108 antenna elements, and the array can scan its beam to 60 in
the upper hemisphere. Plated through holes were introduced to suppress the surface
waves and thus reduce the mutual coupling between adjacent elements. Because of
the small size of the array element, which is 5 mm 5 mm (0.5λ30GHz 0.5λ30GHz),
four T/R modules are integrated on one Monolithic Microwave Integrated Circuit
(MMIC), as shown in Fig. 7.
Recent development in the smart antennas with DBF includes electronically
steerable receive and transmit antennas for satellite communications at Ka-band
reported in Stark et al. (2009). In this work, the smart antenna is a highly integrated
antenna with 15-layer low-temperature co-fired ceramic (LTCC) tiles and combines
the antenna elements, the calibration network, the RF circuitry, and the cooling
system. The architecture of this DBF smart antenna is shown in Fig. 8.
Since smart antenna is a complicated system especially for the adaptively beam-
steering smart antenna, it is impossible to cover all the details for the design of each
MMIC
T/R T/R
module 1 module 2
Radiating
element
T/R T/R
module 3 module 4
Active circuit
Fig. 7 Demonstration of using one MMIC integrated with four T/R modules to control four
antenna elements as presented in Chaloun et al. (2014)
Fig. 8 The architecture of the

Antenna
smart antennas with DBF as
presented in Stark et al. (2009)
RF circuit
IF circuit
DAC
I/Q modulation
DSP
component including the RF circuit design in this chapter. Instead, this chapter will
focus more on the design of the array antenna and its corresponding feed network.
For the design of the RF circuits, readers can refer to Li (2012) for more details. This
chapter is organized as follows. In section “Smart Antenna Design,” the design
techniques of array antennas for beam-switching and adaptive beam-steering smart
antenna are demonstrated with examples. Then, in section “Application of Smart
Antennas in SatCom,” the applications of smart antennas in the field of satellite
ground station and mobile direct broadcasting satellite systems are presented.
Smart Antenna Design
As introduced in section “Introduction,” smart antennas can be categorized into two

main types: beam-switching smart antennas and adaptive beam-steering smart anten-
nas. A beam-switching smart antenna has a beam-forming network that provides fixed
phase shift to form shaped beams in predefined directions. After introducing either the
RF switches or using couplers with multiple ports, the beam can be switched dis-
cretely. This leads to a low-cost solution because there is no need of using any phase
shifters and amplitude attenuators. Due to the complexity of the feed network, most of
the beam-switching smart antennas are only able to switch the beam in one direction.
In contrast to the beam-switching smart antenna, the adaptive beam-steering
smart antenna is able to continuously steer the beam to the desired directions and
shape the beam to maximize the link budget with sophisticated signal processing
algorithms. The accurate control of the input phase and amplitude to each radiating
elements increases the system complexity; thus, adaptive smart antennas exhibit
higher cost.
Beam-Switching Smart Antenna
Beam-switching smart antennas provide a low-cost and low power consumption

solution if the continuous beam steering is not required. It does not need to employ
any phase shifters, and in most cases analogue beam forming is used. A beam-
switching smart antenna has a beam-forming network that provides a set of fixed
phase shifts to the array elements, and shaped beams in predefined directions can be
formed. Thus, the beam-forming network is the most critical component of the
beam-switching smart antenna.
Theory
Figure 9 shows the generic architecture of a beam-switching array. To realize a
beam-switching feed network, multiple ports are usually employed, and the beams
can be switched by selecting the corresponding RF port.
One technique for realizing such a beam-forming feed network is to introduce RF
switches on the feed network. Figure 10 shows one example of introducing RF
switches on the feed network of a one-dimensional microstrip patch transmitting
array with four radiating elements.
As can be seen from Fig. 10, two RF switches are mounted on the input of the
microstrip feed lines, and by controlling the states of the RF switches, the patches
can be fed by RF signals with two different phase delays. This is equivalent to a
two-port beam-forming feed network. Introducing more RF switches increases the
number of different phase delays for each radiating element, and then more radiation
patterns can be obtained. One of the most common and cost-effective RF switches is
the RF PIN diode. RF PIN diodes exhibit fast switching time with reasonable
insertion loss and isolation. A RF MEMS (microelectromechanical system) exhibits
a better performance with respect to low insertion loss and high operation frequency
(e.g., millimeter wave frequencies) but with higher fabrication cost and assembly
complexity.
A biasing circuit is required in the feed network in order to control the ON and
OFF states of the RF switches. The biasing circuit must ensure that there is a high
RF/DC isolation at both the RF port and the DC power source, while there is low
insertion loss and impedance mismatch caused by the lumped elements introduced.
Port 1
Port 2
Beam-
forming RF
source
Feed
network
Port n
Fig. 9 The generic architecture of a beam-switching smart antenna

Microstrip
Patch
Δ Phase
Microstrip
feed lines
RF switch
RF in
Fig. 10 Example of introducing RF switches on the feed network of an array antenna
Fig. 11 A circuit model of

the biasing circuit for RF PIN Capacitor
switches in antenna diode
application RF in/out
Inductor Resistor
Inductor
DC
Figure 11 presents a circuit model of the biasing circuit for an antenna application.
The capacitor is employed to block the DC power, while the inductor is used to block
the RF signals (RF chock). For printed microstrip antenna design, the DC bias line
can be realized by microstrip lines of narrow width, which exhibits high impedance
at RF frequencies. To ensure proper impedance matching, the capacitor needs to
have a small reactance at the lowest microwave frequency of interest, and its self-
resonant frequency must be much higher than the highest frequency of interest (AVX
Corporation). A microstrip line of a quarter wavelength and radial stubs can be used
to improve the impedance matching of the feed network.
Another well-known approach to design a beam-switching feed network is to use
a Butler matrix (Butler and Lowe 1961). The Butler matrix has N input ports and N
output ports, where:
Fig. 12 A four-port branch- 0.707×Z0

line couplers Z0
Z0
1 3
λ/4
λ/4
Z0 Z0
2 4
Z0 Z0
0.707×Z0
N ¼ 4n, n ¼ 1, 2, 3, . . .
Figure 12 shows the layout of a four-port Butler matrix realized by the branch-line
coupler. As shown in Fig. 12, each transmission line is a quarter wavelength long at
the frequency of interest, and the horizontal microstrip lines have impedance of
0.707 Z0.
With a four-port Butler matrix, the scattering matrix can be expressed as:
2 3 2 3
Output 1 Input 1
6 Output 2 7 6 Input 2 7
6 7 6 7
4 Output 3 5 ¼ B 4 Input 3 5 (10)
Output 4 Input 4
where
2 3
0 0 1 j
1 6 0 0 j 1 7
B ¼ pffiffiffi 6
4
7 (11)
2 1 j 0 0 5
j 1 0 0
Assuming the port 1 (as indicated in Fig. 12) is the input port with voltage of Vin,
which means:
2 3 2 3
Input 1 Vin
6 Input 2 7 6 0 7
6 7 6 7
4 Input 3 5 ¼ 4 0 5 (12)
Input 4 0
Solving the above equations, it can be derived that:
Output 1 ¼ 0
Output 2 ¼ 0
Vin
Output 3 ¼ pffiffiffi expðφÞ
2
Vin π
Output 4 ¼ pffiffiffi exp φ (13)
2 2
This means that 90 phase difference is obtained at the ports 3 and 4, and port 2 is
isolated. By changing the input port from port 1 to port 2, the output phase of the
ports 3 and 4 is swapped.
Design Examples
Figure 13 shows the schematic diagram of using branch-line couplers and power
dividers to form a feeding network for a beam-switching array. As presented in
Fig. 12, the branch-line coupler can split the input RF signal with equal amplitude
and 90 phase difference. Then, microstrip power dividers can be introduced to the
output ports of the branch-line couplers. Microstrip lines of varied length can be used
at the outputs of the power dividers to introduce the true time delays and thus control
the input phases for each radiating elements.
As an example, Fig. 14 shows one feeding network based on the branch-line
coupler presented in Han et al. (2012). This feeding network is designed for a beam-
switching array that consists of four patch elements that operates at 5.1–5.3 GHz.
A branch-line coupler is employed at the first stage of the feed network, and then the
two coupled lines are introduced to split the power into four outputs, where the
microstrip patch is fed by probe feeding. The length of the microstrip lines after
the power divider can be varied to produce different phase delays, which is deter-
mined by the required beam-switching angle. The radiating elements are fed with
1 to 2
Port 1
power
Input 1 Branch divider Port 2
line
coupler 1 to 2
Input 2 Port 3
power
divider Port 4
Fig. 13 The schematic diagram of using branch-line couplers and power dividers to design a feed
network for a beam-switching array
Fig. 14 The configuration of the feeding network presented in Han et al. (2012)
two different sets of phase distributions when the RF signals are input from port 1 or
port 2. The corresponding phases of each radiating element are indicated in Fig. 14.
Thus, the beam of this array can be switched by selecting different input ports.
Figure 15 shows the measured radiation patterns of this beam-switching array
when port 1 and port 2 are selected. As seen, when port 1 is selected as the input port,
this linear array has its beam pointing at 22.5 while the beam is switched to 22.5
when port 2 is excited. This design is a very classic example of applying branch-line
coupler and power dividers to obtain a beam-switching feed network. In this
example, the beam can only be switched between two different angles. More
beam-switching angles can be obtained by cascading more couplers, and then the
number of input port is also increased.
Besides using a Butler matrix, another approach for designing a beam-switching
array is to introduce RF switches on the feeding lines. Figure 16 shows the layout of
a feeding network with PIN diode switches embedded on the feed lines for the array
antenna in Maqsood et al. (2014). The DC biasing network is required to provide
proper DC bias for the PIN diode switches. To ensure that there is high isolation
between DC and RF source, inductors of 100 nH are used as the RF chocking and
capacitors of 10 μF are used as the shunt capacitors at the biasing points.
As shown in Fig. 16, the feed network has four output states, which means that
the phase of each radiating element can be adjusted with four different sets of phase;
thus, the beam of the array can be switched to four different angles. Four dual-band
circularly polarized stacked annular ring antennas are used in this array, and the
resonating frequencies are designed to be 2.454 and 3.15 GHz. Figure 17 shows the
a 0
Co-Pol
−5 X-Pol
Normalized amplitude (dB)
−10
−15
−20
−25
−30
−35
−150 −100 −50 0 50 100 150
Theta (Degree)
b 0
Co-Pol
−5 X-Pol
Normalized amplitude (dB)
−10
−15
−20
−25
−30
−35
−150 −100 −50 0 50 100 150
Theta (Degree)
Fig. 15 The measured radiation patterns of the beam-switching array presented in Han et al. (2012)
when (a) port 1 is excited and (b) port 2 is excited
measured radiation pattern of this beam-switching array with four different sets of
phase distributions when different RF switches were forwarded biased. It is observed
that at both frequencies, the beam of the array can be switched to 25 with
moderate gain and low sidelobes.
From these two design examples, it can be seen that with a Butler matrix, the
beam switching of an array can be realized by selecting the corresponding input
ports. The number of the ports increases with increasing number of antennas. The
array is a multiple-input and multiple-output system and can also be applied to the
multi-beam applications. With the second approach, which is introducing RF
Fig. 16 The layout of the feeding network with PIN diode switches (Maqsood et al. 2014)
switches on the feeding lines, the phase distribution of the array can be adjusted by
controlling the states of the RF switches, and only one input port is required.
However, additional DC-biased circuitry is required to control the RF switches,
which increases the overall system complexity and reduces the efficiency of the
antenna system (due to the loss of the RF switches) if a large number of RF switches
are employed.
Beam-Steering Smart Antenna
Theory
Adaptive beam-steering smart antennas are able to continuously steer the beam to the
desired directions and shape the beam to maximize the link budget with sophisti-
cated signal processing algorithms. This makes it more attractive compared to the
beam-switching smart antennas, which can only provide limited number of beams.
For mobile satellite applications such as SatCom on the move, the adaptive beam-
steering smart antenna is required to scan the beam within large angle ranges with
high efficiency.
The beam forming of the adaptive smart array antennas can be achieved by
employing a phased array with controllable amplitude and phase. Figure 18 shows
the general architecture of a smart antenna with analogue beam forming (Luo
et al. 2014).
A two-dimensional antenna array with large scan angle is usually required to be
equipped on an adaptive smart antenna. When the size of the array is large, the
radiating elements in the central region have similar characteristics as an element in
an infinite array. Then, the array can be analyzed by using the Floquet modes with
the assumption that the array has an infinite size. With Floquet modes, an antenna
array with infinite sources can be represented as a superposition of Floquet modal
functions, instead of solving Maxwell’s equations with infinite source excitation
Fig. 17 The measured radiation patterns of the dual-band CP array at (a) 2.454GHz and (b)
3.15GHz (Maqsood et al. 2014)
To
processing
Down-
units
∑ converter to A/D
baseband
Complex
Weight
Adaptive
Weight processer
control
Fig. 18 The general architecture of a smart antenna with analogue beam forming
functions. It has been proven that using the results from the infinite array, the
performance of a finite array (e.g., mutual coupling, active reflection coefficients)
can be determined with good accuracy (Bhattacharyya 2006).
When the array elements are excited with uniform amplitudes and linearly
progressed phase, using the Floquet modal function, the impedance of an array
element can be calculated by (Bhattacharyya 2006):
! !
Z FL kx0, ky0 ¼ < E , I >
(14)
I 20
where kx0 is the phase constants in X-direction, ky0 is the phase constants in
!
Y-direction, I0 is the input current, E is the electric field at the current source
! ! !
location, I is the current distribution function, and < E , I > is the self-reaction of
the current source in the unit cell and is given by:
ðð
! ! ! !
< E , I >¼ E I dx dy (15)
After computing the Floquet impedance of the array element with different scan
angles, the scan blindness angle can be identified by locating the angle where the
input impedance of the antenna exhibits a large value (poor impedance matching). At
the scan blindness angle, the antenna array does not radiate, and almost all of the
input RF energy is reflected back.
Design Example
One Ka-band folded reflectarray with large scan angle for SatCom on the move has
recently been presented in Luo et al. (2013). This reflectarray can scan its beam to
60 in the hemisphere with an appropriate active microwave circuitry.
Fig. 19 The configuration of the folded reflectarray presented in Luo et al. (2013)
The configuration of this folded reflectarray is shown in Fig. 19. As seen, this
reflectarray consists of a planar microstrip slot antenna array and a dielectric
polarizer. Behind each radiating element, its interface allows it to incorporate the
transmit/receive unit with phase/amplitude control.
The unit cell of this reflectarray is based on a dual-polarized square-ring slot
antenna fed by striplines, as shown in Fig. 20a. The dual linear polarized array unit
cell is used to rotate the E-field of the reradiated waves from the slot antenna by 90 ,
as required for the folded reflectarray design (Menzel and Kessler 2009). In order to
integrate with the MMIC that lies below each of the radiating element, the RF signal
is transmitted through a stripline to coaxial-like structure with shielding vias. For the
purpose of characterizing the array elements, passive prototypes were developed,
and stripline to microstrip line transitions are introduced, as shown in Fig. 20b.
The distance between each unit cell is kept to half of its free space wavelength at
30 GHz, in order to avoid the grating lobes during the beam scanning. Meanwhile,
Fig. 20 (a) The top and side view of the reflectarray unit cell; (b) the stripline to microstrip line
transition (Luo et al. 2013)
to make sure the array can steer the beam to large angles, it is important to suppress
the propagation of the surface wave and keep a high isolation between the two
input ports of the array element as well as the ports between the adjacent radiating
element. To achieve this, vias were introduced near the radiating slots. Figure 21
shows the positions of the vias on the radiating element and the simulated isolation
between the two ports of the array unit cell as well as the isolation between
adjacent antenna elements analyzed by using the Floquet modes. As can be seen,
the isolation between the two ports of the antenna is always higher than 20 dB, and
the lowest isolation between two adjacent elements is higher than 19 dB. These
high isolations ensure that this array can scan its beam to large angles without any
scan blindness.
The required phase for each radiating element in order to have its focused beam
steered to certain angle is calculated by using the formula (Huang and Encinar 2007):
0
Two ports of the element
Adjacent element
−10
S21 (dB)
−20
−30
29 29.5 30 30.5 31 31.5

Frequency (GHz)
Fig. 21 The positions of the via on the array element and the simulated isolation between the two
ports of the antenna as well as the lowest isolation between two adjacent elements in an infinite size
array
ФR ¼ k0 ðd i ðxi cos φb þ yi sin φb Þ sin θb Þ
where ФR is the phase of the reflection coefficient of the antenna element i, k0 is the
phase constant in vacuum, (xi, yi) are the coordinates of the array element i, di is the
distance from the phase center of the feed to the antenna unit cell, and (θb, φb) is the
expected scan angle of the beam in the spherical coordinate system.
Several passive demonstrators were fabricated. The measured radiation patterns
of the passive reflectarray at 30GHz with fixed beam steered to different angles are
shown in Fig. 22. As can be seen from these measurement results, the radiation
performances of the passive reflectarray demonstrators exhibit low sidelobes with
frozen beam pointing at different scan angles up to 60 . The measured maximum
gain at broadside is 21.7 dBi, which represents 42 % aperture efficiency. Because of
having a symmetrical structure, similar results were observed for the measured
radiation patterns in H-plane.
To achieve an active phased array, it is important to incorporate the active
microwave circuit with beam-forming network. MMIC devices are normally
employed for such applications. Due to the small size of the Ka-band array element,
which is only 5 mm 5 mm, it requires combining several transmit/receive (T/R)
modules on one chip. It is impossible to address the details of the microwave circuit
design in this chapter, but readers can refer to Valenta et al. (2012) for more
information.
From this example, it can be seen that the complexity of designing an adaptive
beam-steerable smart antenna is high, for both the array antenna and the microwave
circuit design. Since a large number of radiating elements are usually employed for
such application, using Floquet modal functions provides an effective method to
analyze the radiation performance of the array. In the next section, the applications of
smart antenna in satellite communications will be presented with practical design
examples.
0° −15°
15°
30° −30°
45° −45°
60° −60°
75° −75°
90° −90°
105° Broadside −105°

−20 45-degree
60-degree
120° −120°
−10
135° −135°
150° −150°
165° 0 −165°
±180°
Fig. 22 The measured radiation patterns of the folded reflectarray with beam pointing at 0 , 45 ,
and 60 in E-plane
Application of Smart Antennas in SatCom
Smart Antennas for Satellite Earth Station Systems
Satellites can be categorized as geostationary and non-geostationary satellites according

to the orbits that they are operating. The geostationary satellites, which are in a circular
orbit directly above the equator of the earth, have positions in the sky that remains the
same for the ground station stationary observer on earth. In this case, the antenna for
the ground station does not need to track the satellites, and the beam steering for the
satellite ground station is not required as the satellites are in relative fixed locations. For
such application, conventional reflector antennas can provide a low-cost solution with
promising radiation performance. For the non-geostationary satellites, such as satellites
in elliptical geosynchronous orbits or in low Earth orbit (LEO), it is required that the
antenna systems for the ground stations are able to track the satellites.
Therefore, the antennas for the satellite earth station application are usually
required to satisfy the following technique specification:
1. Have high gain with low sidelobes: to ensure good data connection and minimize
the unwanted interference
2. Be able to track the non-geostationary satellites and provide wide angular coverage
3. Use circularly polarized antenna
Table 1 lists some of the frequency bands that have been defined for the satellite
communication.
Table 2 summarizes the characteristics of some non-geostationary satellite systems.
Intelsat has defined many standards for the satellite earth stations. Each standard
corresponds to different types of services provided by the earth station. Some of the
Intelsat Earth Station Standards (IESS) are listed in Table 3. More standards with
detailed definitions can be found in Intelsat (2005, 2006).
Conventionally, reflector antennas are employed for the satellite earth station, as its
advantages of high gain, broad operation bandwidth, and low cost. However, they are
always bulky and can only track the satellites by mechanical movement, which makes it
impossible for them to communicate with multiple satellites simultaneously or perform
seamless handover unless more than one reflector are employed, as shown in Fig. 23.
Table 1 Common Uplink Downlink

frequency bands for
L-band 1.62–1.66 GHz 1.52–1.56 GHz
satellite communication
(Amyotte and Martins S-band ~2 GHz ~2.2 GHz
Camelo 2012) C-band 5.5–6.5 GHz 3.5–4.2 GHz
Ku-band 13–14.5 GHz 10.7–11.7 GHz
Ka-band 29.5–31.2 GHz 19.5–21.2 GHz
Table 2 Specifications of Constellation Lugos Skybridge

some non-geostationary
Approximate number of satellite 161 64
satellites systems
(Radiocommunications- Uplink frequency band 29.1 GHz 14 GHz
Agency-UK) Downlink frequency band 19.3 GHz 11 GHz
Uplink terminal antenna gain 32.26 dBi 32.2 dBi
Downlink terminal antenna gain 33.69 dBi 30.6 dBi
Table 3 Intelsat Earth Earth station

Station Standards (Intelsat standard Frequency band G/T
2005, 2006)
A 6/4 GHz 35 dB/K
B 6/4 GHz 31.7
dB/K
C 14/11 GHz and/or 14/12 37 dB/K
GHz
E-1 6/4 GHz 25 dB/K
E-2 6/4 GHz 29 dB/K
K-2 14/11 GHz and/or 14/12 19.8
GHz dB/K
K-3 14/11 GHz and/or 14/12 23.3
GHz dB/K
Fig. 23 Using multiple reflector antennas to communicate with multiple satellites
Compared to the reflector antennas, smart antennas have the capability to scan the
beam electronically with high pointing accuracy. The beam of the array can be
steered in microseconds; thus, with only one smart antenna, different satellites can be
tracked, and the handover can be done seamlessly. Figure 24 illustrates the scenario
that uses one smart antenna array to communicate with multiple satellites.
It is known that with a planar phased array, the gain of the array decreases at larger
scan angles in the elevation plane, as the results of the reduction in the effective
radiation aperture, and it cannot cover the entire azimuth plane. Therefore, in order to
have a smart antenna that can steer the beam in the entire hemisphere, faceted array
and hemispherical array can be employed (Josefsson and Persson 2006). The
advantage of using such arrays is that the array facets can be selected in order to
enhance the antenna performance in certain parts of the overall coverage region. For
either the hemisphere array or the faceted array, the number of active radiating
elements can be controlled so the array with different beamwidth and directivity
can be formed based on the needs of the mission. Narrower beamwidth can be
achieved at small elevation angles because more radiating elements can be activated
Fig. 24 Illustration of one smart antenna array communicates with multiple satellites
due to the geometrical configuration. Figure 25 shows the calculated radiation

patterns of a hemisphere array and a faceted array with beam pointing at different
elevation angles (Yao et al. 2012). It can be seen that a hemisphere array and a
faceted array can steer the beam over large angle ranges with similar radiation
patterns. The beam steering of the array is achieved by taking advantage of its
physical geometry. During the beam steering, only a small number of the antenna
elements are radiating, and the rest of array elements are deactivated, which results in
low aperture efficiency of the array antenna.
One important issue associated with the fully electronic beam-steering smart
array antenna is the complexity of the RF circuit, especially when the number of
the radiating element is large. Besides the complexity in the circuit design, the use of
large amount phase shifters, the size of the feed network, and effective system
thermal dissipation can increase the cost and reduce the radiation efficiency of the
overall antenna system. Thus, until now there are few available commercial products
equipped with a fully electronic beam-steering smart array antenna.
a 5
0
Normalized Gain (dB)
−5
−10
−15
−20
−10 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
Elevation angel (Degree)
b 0
Normalized Gain (dB)
−5
−10
−15
−20
−10 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
Elevation angel (Degree)
Fig. 25 The calculated radiation patterns of the (a) hemisphere array and (b) facet array with beam
pointing at 10 , 30 , and 50 . There are totally 82,177 radiating elements in the hemisphere array
and 40,100 radiating elements in the facet array (Yao et al. 2012)
To reduce the cost while maintaining reasonable system efficiency, a hybrid

system provides a compromised solution. Figure 26 shows the configuration of an
m n microstrip antenna array. Instead of incorporating one phase shifter for each of
the antenna element, the array is divided into m linear subarray arrays, and the phase
shifting is implemented at the subarray level. Thus, the amount of the phase shifters
is reduced from m n to m. However, with this configuration the array is only able
to scan in one direction. By introducing a mechanical steerable platform, beam
scanning within the entire hemisphere would be possible.
In the applications where fast tracking is not required, using mechanically beam-
steerable smart antenna provides the most economical solution. Figure 27 demon-
strates one planar array placed at a platform that can be rotated in both azimuth and
Antenna Antenna Antenna

1−1 1−2 1−n

2−1 2−2 2−n

m−1 m−2 m−n
Fig. 26 Illustration of using reduced number of phase shifters for a planar array
Fig. 27 A planar array

placed at a platform that can
be rotated in both azimuth and
elevation plane
Fig. 28 The photo of the aero mobile terminal for satellite communication at Ka-band developed
by Viasat #2014 Viasat (Reprinted with permission from Viasat)
elevation plane. In this configuration, there is no need of using any phase shifters,
and the beam steering is controlled by the corresponding motors.
Figure 28 shows a photo of the commercial available terminal for the aero mobile
applications. This array is designed for Ka-band application, and dual-polarized
(RHCP and LHCP) waveguide horn is used as the radiating element. It operates at
28.1 to 30.0 GHz for transmission and 18.3 to 20.2 GHz for receiving. The antenna
system consists of an antenna array, control unit, and programmable servomotors
that can be used for azimuth and elevation position controlling. It is reported that this
antenna has elevation coverage from 0 to 75 and 360 continuous coverage in
azimuth plane. More than 2,500 radiating elements are used, and the antenna array
has EIRP (equivalent isotropically radiated power) of 43.5 dBW after taking account
of the radome loss.
Smart Antennas for Mobile Direct Broadcast Satellite Systems
The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) authorized the use of high-power

Ku-band for the satellite-to-home video program during 1979 and 1989. These
services are the so-called direct broadcast satellite (DBS) services (Meadows
2008). DBS provides high-powered broadcast services, including television and
radio services, to users in large geographic areas (Thorburn 2012). Figure 29
shows the scenario of the direct broadcasting satellite system, where one broadcast
center uplinks signals to the satellite and then the satellite retransmits the signals to
multiple users in the areas covered by the satellite antenna system. The frequency
bands allocated for the DBS are 11.7–12.2 GHz in ITU Region 3 (Asia and
Australia), 10.7–12.75 GHz in ITU Region 1 (Europe, Russia, and Africa), and
12.2–12.7 GHz in ITU Region 2 (North and South America).
To ensure good reception from the broadcasting satellites, the DBS antenna is
required to have a gain of more than 21dBi and have a beam with a certain title angle
(Hirokawa et al. 1995; Watanabe et al. 1996) in the elevation plane. For mobile
users, such as moving vehicles, the antenna system is also required to be able to track
the DBS satellites.
Fig. 29 Illustration of the direct broadcasting satellite system
Fig. 30 Employing a planar

array on a rotating base that
steers the beam in the azimuth
plane
Antenna array
To reduce the system complexity, the antenna array can be designed to exhibit
relatively broad beamwidth in the elevation plane and place the array with certain
inclination angle (Soon-Ik et al. 2000). The beam steering in the azimuth plane can
be realized by rotating the array mechanically (e.g., by a motor), as demonstrated in
Fig. 30. It is reported that with a beamwidth of about 12 , even without the beam
steering, promising reception can still be reached in Japan (Hirokawa et al. 1995;
Watanabe et al. 1996).
Mechanical steering is a low-cost solution, but it suffers from the low tracking
speed. For the system presented above, to track the broadcasting satellite, about 2 s
are needed (Hirokawa et al. 1995). It is shown that for the real-time road tests, the
turning speed of a medium size car can be as fast as 60 /s with an angular
acceleration of up to 85 /s2 (Mousavi et al. 2009). Thus, more accurate tracking of
the satellite is needed for better services. In this case, electronic beam steering is
desired. However, similar to the smart antenna for ground station, a full electronic
beam-steering array can lead to a complex and high-cost system. Therefore, the
hybrid design that combines both the electronic and mechanical beam steering
provides a relatively low-cost solution with improved system performance.
A vehicle-mounted satellite antenna for mobile DBS application is described in
Wang and Winters (2004). The look angle of the antenna is set to about 40 in the
elevation plane, and the beams can be electronically steered by 15 . In the azimuth
plane, mechanical steering is employed. There are two reasons for such configura-
tion. Firstly, the tracking accuracy needs to be higher in elevation than azimuth
plane. Secondly, it can keep a low profile for the overall antenna system, so it is
suitable for mounting on the roof of the vehicle. This antenna consists of ridge
waveguides, on which cross-shaped slots were uniformly spaced, as shown in
Fig. 31. By optimizing the positions and the length of the cross-shaped slot,
circularly polarized radiation can be achieved. As a waveguide slot array, it can
radiate different polarized waves in forward and backward direction (Gao
et al. 2014). Thus, either LHCP or RHCP can be obtained.
Figure 32 demonstrates the mounting of this DBS smart antenna on the roof the
car. This smart antenna has a low profile with height of less than 76 mm.
Recently, a smart antenna array based on microstrip printed antenna and subarray
technique has been presented in Mousavi et al. (2008, 2010). Mechanical rotation at
Fig. 31 Configuration of the smart antenna for DBS consists of wave guide slot array presented in
Wang and Winters (2004)
Fig. 32 Demonstration of mounting of the smart antenna presented in Wang and Winters (2004) on
the roof of the car
Fig. 33 The phased array antenna for DBS application reported in Mousavi et al. (2010) (Courtesy
of Centre for Intelligent Antenna and Radio Systems (CIARS), Canada)
both azimuth and elevation planes is employed, while the array can additionally scan
the beam electronically in the elevation plane. Thus, this smart antenna can provide a
wide-angle reception for the DBS satellite reception. 2 2 linearly polarized patch
was arranged in a sequentially rotated position to generate the CP radiation. There
are 17 subarrays used for either RHCP or LHCP operation, and for each polarization,
the antenna arrays are placed in five consecutive panels with certain tilt angle, as
shown in Fig. 33. Since the array antenna is fabricated by using PCB techniques, it
exhibits lighter weight with less fabrication complexity compared to the waveguide-
based arrays.
Figure 34 shows the system configuration of this smart antenna system. There are
two motors that can be controlled to mechanically rotate the antenna array in both
azimuth and elevation planes. Each subarray is connected to a voltage-controlled
RHCP array antenna LHCP array antenna
BFN BFN
Control Board
Azimuth Elevation
motor motor
Fig. 34 The system configuration of the smart antenna reported in Mousavi et al. (2010)
analogue phase shifter via an LNA and low-loss cable. The phase shifters can be
controlled by the voltages, which can be adjusted by the beam-forming algorithm,
applied through the digital to analogue converter (DAC) board. For either LHCP or
RHCP polarization, a power combiner is used to combine the outputs of the phase
shifters. Novel model-free beam-forming algorithms (Fakharzadeh et al. 2009) are
employed to track the desired satellite and compensate the inaccuracy from the
fabrication errors. It is reported in Mousavi et al. (2010) that with these algorithms,
this smart antenna can maintain the received power level above the 90 % in any road
test circumstances.
Future Directions and Open Problems
Smart antennas are important for satellite communications. They can increase
channel capacity, track satellites electronically, and avoid interference signals.
These advantages over conventional antennas make them attract much research
interest. In this chapter, a review on smart antenna technologies and design exam-
ples, including one beam-switching CP array and one reflectarray with large scan
angle range, are presented. The beam-switching smart array provides a low-cost
solution with a limited number of fixed beams, while the adaptive smart array can
steer the beam continuously with higher system complexity and cost. The applica-
tions of smart antennas for satellite ground stations and mobile direct broadcast
services are also introduced in this chapter. Different solutions with design examples
as well as commercial applications are discussed and presented.
The future work for the smart antenna design involves the design of fully
electronically scanned smart array antenna for satellite communications at
Q-band (33–50 GHz), V-band (50–75 GHz), and W-band (75–110 GHz), as the
need for more spectrum and satisfying the growing communication capacity
requirements (Acosta 2012). Although 60-GHz antenna arrays with multilayered
configuration and fabricated by using low-temperature co-fired ceramic (LTCC)
technology have been reported recently (Hucheng et al. 2013; Lei et al. 2013),
these presented arrays cannot perform beam scanning. The challenge at these
higher frequency bands is the following: In order to keep the beam-scanning
capability and maximize the largest scan angle of the smart antenna without any
grating lobes and scan blindness, the maximum dimension of the array element is
approximately half the free space wavelength at the frequency of interest. In order
to make the array antenna be scalable, it is desirable to have an independent MMIC
below each array element. Thus, each radiating element can be treated as an
intelligent pixel. This also gives challenges to the MMIC and beam-forming
network design as the size of the MMIC is constrained by the size of the radiating
element. Moreover, the integration of the overall system and the heat dissipation
need to be addressed as well.
Terahertz antennas also attract much research interests in recent years, and
antenna array for operation at terahertz frequency is anticipated. Electronically
controllable phase shifters operating at THz frequencies are critical components
for a terahertz phased antenna array. Terahertz antenna phase shifter designs, includ-
ing using electrically driven THz metamaterials (Chen et al. 2009) and integrally
gated graphene transmission lines (Pai-Yen et al. 2013), have been investigated.
Since terahertz frequencies are between the microwave and optical frequencies,
efficient fabrication techniques with low antenna loss need to be further explored,
especially when many radiating elements are required to form a high-gain array
antenna.
Another direction for the future work is to incorporate gallium nitride (GaN)-
based MMIC with high power amplifiers (HPA) under each radiating element, and
then the power of amplifiers can be combined in space by the smart array antenna, as
shown in Fig. 35. The material properties of GaN exhibit revolutionary performance
for millimeter wave power amplifiers in many aspects compared to conventional
gallium arsenide (GaAs) technology, including the output power, power-added
efficiency (PAE), operation bandwidth, signal linearity, gain flatness, and noise
level (Oki et al. 2013). In term of applying the GaN technology in the smart antenna
design, one of the challenges for this concept is how to efficiently dissipate the heat
generated by all the HPAs.
Using new materials, such as graphene/carbon nanotube (Wu et al. 2014) brings
new perspectives to the future antenna and antenna array designs. One antenna-
enhanced optoelectronic microscopy study on nanoscale devices has been presented
recently (Mauser et al. 2014), but there are few works in using these new materials to
design smart array antennas up to now. Thus, more investigations are expected in
this new field.
Fig. 35 The concept of the

g
intelligent pixel with tiinng
a
a ddiiaat enntt
GaN-based MMIC RR m e
eelleem
C
M IIC
MM
M
N
GGaaN IICC
M
MMM
N
GGaaN IICC
M
MMM
N
GGaaN IICC
M
MMM
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Smart Antennas For Satellite Communications: Qi Luo and Steven Gao

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Smart Antennas for Satellite

Qi Luo and Steven Gao

Q. Luo (*) • S. Gao

# Springer Science+Business Media Singapore 2016 2541

Fig. 1 Classiﬁcation of smart Smart antenna

Beam-switching Adaptively MIMO

Analogue beam Digital beam

Passive phased array Active phased array

Key Parameters of a Smart Antenna

Figure 2 shows a general structure of a smart antenna. A smart antenna usually

Etotal ¼ Esingle_antenna AF (1)

Beam forming network

Fig. 2 The generic architecture of a smart antenna

AF ¼ Sxm Syn (2)

Review on the Smart Antenna Design

Beam-Switching Smart Antennas

Fig. 5 Demonstration of Microstrip

Adaptive Beam-Steering Smart Antennas

Fig. 8 The architecture of the

Smart Antenna Design

As introduced in section “Introduction,” smart antennas can be categorized into two

Beam-Switching Smart Antenna

Beam-switching smart antennas provide a low-cost and low power consumption

Fig. 9 The generic architecture of a beam-switching smart antenna

Fig. 10 Example of introducing RF switches on the feed network of an array antenna

Fig. 11 A circuit model of

Fig. 12 A four-port branch- 0.707×Z0

Solving the above equations, it can be derived that:

Beam-Steering Smart Antenna

29 29.5 30 30.5 31 31.5

ФR ¼ k0 ðd i ðxi cos φb þ yi sin φb Þ sin θb Þ

105° Broadside −105°

Application of Smart Antennas in SatCom

Smart Antennas for Satellite Earth Station Systems

Satellites can be categorized as geostationary and non-geostationary satellites according

Table 1 Common Uplink Downlink

Table 2 Specifications of Constellation Lugos Skybridge

Table 3 Intelsat Earth Earth station

Fig. 23 Using multiple reﬂector antennas to communicate with multiple satellites

due to the geometrical conﬁguration. Figure 25 shows the calculated radiation

To reduce the cost while maintaining reasonable system efﬁciency, a hybrid

Antenna Antenna Antenna

Antenna Antenna Antenna

Antenna Antenna Antenna

Fig. 27 A planar array

Smart Antennas for Mobile Direct Broadcast Satellite Systems

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) authorized the use of high-power

Fig. 29 Illustration of the direct broadcasting satellite system

Fig. 30 Employing a planar

RHCP array antenna LHCP array antenna

Future Directions and Open Problems

Fig. 35 The concept of the

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