Power Taper Implementation for Large-Area Phased Array Antennas on Orbit using Subarrays with Gradually Increasing Number of Elements Method

The use of phased array antenna (PAA) with a power taper in a space solar power systems requires a configuration that can be mass-produced. However, there was no conventional method of constructing a PAA with power taper, which suitable for mass production. Therefore, this paper proposes a method of constructing a PAA with a single type of amplifier and uniform spacing between antenna elements, which gradually increases the number of elements in the subarray. As a result of applying the proposed method to a 10-dB truncated Gaussian taper, the power transmission efficiency is equal to or higher than that conventional methods. In addition, the proposed method was demonstrated in experiments using a one-dimensional patch antenna array.