A Modular Architecture for Low Cost Phased Array Antenna System for Ka-Band Mobile Satellite Communication

A low-cost and low profile phased array antenna system based on a modular approach is being developed for Ka -band mobile SATCOM applications. A Transmitter (TX) antenna array has been designed to provide the required circular polarized (CP) radiation beam with sufficient gain and a radiation pattern that satisfies the standard (FCC) emission mask. In the proposed modular approach, the intelligent active phased subarray (module) is designed and used as a building block to construct the whole array in any form and any size in any customized platform. In this design, the size of the intelligent subarray is chosen to be 4X4 with half-wavelength separation between the elements for both TX (30 GHz), and RX (20 GHz) array antennas. Larger array antenna with a few thousands of radiating elements can be formed by assembling as many modules as required on one platform. This paper discusses the modular approach aspects and its application in large scale phased array antenna implementation. Super TX / RX array modules of 256 elements are assembled and tested successfully to validate the proposed modular architecture. The measured radiation patterns at 30/ 20 GHz shows that the antenna's main beam can be steered to 70 in both azimuth and elevation directions.