A method to control phased array antenna for rain fading mitigation of 21-GHz band broadcasting satellite

Satellite broadcasting in the 21-GHz band is expected to transmit large-capacity signals. We have been studying rain fading mitigation techniques in order to compensate large amount of rain attenuation. In this paper, we show a method to control the radiation pattern dynamically in accordance with the movement of the rain area assuming array-fed reflector antenna using 61 horns and a reflector with the aperture diameter of 2.2m. Then we compared the number of the outage areas using dynamically controlled radiation pattern formed by the array-fed reflector antenna with that using static radiation pattern formed by shaped reflector antenna while assuming the same input power to the antenna. According to the simulation during 7days, the accumulated number of outage points using dynamic radiation pattern was reduced to less than 50% compared to that using static radiation pattern.