Electrical performance evaluation of large multi-beam antenna system for ETS-VI

The Japanese national project to launch a 2-ton-class geostationary satellite, the ETS-VI (Engineering Test Satellite VI) is now in progress. An on-board antenna system and transponders for the fixed and mobile multibeam satellite communications system are being developed. As the (reflector) antenna system is very large and flexible, it is impossible, on the ground, to measure the performance of the in-orbit configuration to evaluate in-orbit antenna performance. The authors describe a performance evaluation method for the flexible large multibeam antenna system using an antenna CAD (computer-aided design) system. The evaluated in-orbit performance of the antenna system flight model for ETS-VI is presented.<>