Contoured Beam Analysis of Satellite Antenna Directivity and GAP

Contoured beams are widely used for fixed satellite and broadcast satellite services from geostationary earth orbits (GEO). They provide uplink receive and downlink transmit beams from a single antenna where they are shaped to fit close to the geographic coverage region. This paper presents Gaussian beam analysis to predict the minimum coverage area directivity without running time-consuming RF analysis. This analysis is shown to predict antenna directivity values close to more accurate analysis through TICRA software. The analysis is applicable for both contoured beam and spot beam antenna directivity predictions.