A novel technique for high-performance correction of beam aberration in Deep Space Antennas

This paper presents a high-performance technique for beam aberration correction in beam-waveguide antennas. Beam aberration arises when high-gain ground-station antennas target spacecrafts moving not only along the antenna boresight, but also in the transversal direction, so that the antenna receives and transmits in slightly different directions. The novel algorithm has been developed in the case of ESA DSA2, and consists in moving part of the lower beam-waveguide feed system. The proposed methodology is validated by comparing its performance with two techniques found in the literature, in terms of physical optics simulation results.