Affordable Large Scale Active-Phased Array Antenna for Ka-Band Mobile SATCOM Applications

This paper presents the design aspects and the implementation Of an electronically scanned active-phased array antenna (A-PAA) for high throughput Ka-band mobile satellite communication (SATCOM) applications. First, an A-PAA which consists of 64 (4×16) elements is presented as a first step in the evolution towards the final modular design concept. Next, a low cost/complexity solution based on a modular architecture is proposed. With this approach, A-PAAs of any size, shape, and configuration can be made of the same intelligent building block (active sub-array module). The measured results of the modular array show that the antenna's main beam can be steered to ± 70° off the boresight.