Multiaperture multibeam antenna design method for high‐throughput satellite applications

Abstract

As the core technology of high‐throughput satellite payloads, multibeam antennas have received high attention and rapid development in recent years. Because of the characteristics of high gain and high beam isolation, multiaperture multibeam antennas is an important technical approach to meet the high‐performance requirements of high‐throughput satellites. This article proposes a mathematical modeling method based on the mutual coupling parameters of the reflector. This method takes capacity requirements and satellite structure design boundary conditions as input condition, and adopts an adaptive evolutionary multiobjective optimization algorithm to perform joint optimization and solution of multiple parameters, which can complete the optimization efficiently. This method does not need to perform a large number of antenna parameter simulation, reduces the number of iterations and structural layout design, greatly reduces the design cost. This article takes the demand of the AP‐6D satellite as an example, applies the above method to the multibeam antenna design of the satellite, and completes the simulation verification, structural design, physical manufacturing, and various tests of the antenna to verify the correctness of the design method.

Design of multibeam antenna with ultralow cross‐polarization

“…The 28 beams coverage is shown in Figure 2A. A hybrid communication satellite payload usually has two antennas working in the same frequency but orthogonal polarization, 15 so the XP of each antenna should be less than −30 dB to guarantee system availability. While considering the gain of multibeam is higher than shaped beams, the XP of multibeam antenna should be less than −40 dB.…”