On Attaining Lower Sidelobes and New Antenna Envelopes for Better Orbit Spectrum Utilization in Satellite Broadcasting

The orbit spectrum is a natural resource for satellite communications which must be utilized efficiently in order to meet the rapid growth in demand for communication capacity 1,2 and which may become very crowded in the near future. Efficient allocation of this resource has been approached from many different aspects, such as technical, operational, practical and economic. Different methods of improving this utilization efficiency have been proposed, such as reducing the inhomogenity among satellites and defining limitations on system parameters. This report focuses the discussion on a simple method: improving the antenna patterns used in satellite systems, on both the satellite antennas and the ground station antennas. Only broadcasting applications are considered. The discussion includes how the antenna envelope can be improved, how this improvement can be interpreted in terms of orbit spectrum utilization efficiency, and whether this improved envelope is actually realizable and feasible, considering practical aspects.