High performance communications and tracking multi-beam antennas

Next generation multimedia satellite systems will need to deliver optimal performance while being lighter, smaller and less costly than current systems. Current systems often have four reflector antennas for transmit and another four reflector antennas for receive. A more optimal solution can be obtained by combining transmit and receive on each reflector antenna, thus halving the required number of reflectors and feed chains. Several enabling technologies had to be developed to alleviate, and often eliminate, the resulting RF performance degradation. These technologies include high efficiency feed chains, methods of equalizing transmit and receive beam widths, and RF sensing systems to minimize pointing error. This paper describes these technologies and how they address the needs of the next generation of multimedia satellites.