Development of a 45 GHz multiple-beam antenna for military satellite communications

Design and experimental results of a wide-angle coverage 45 GHz multiple-beam antenna for military satellite communications are presented in this paper. The high-gain spot beams with low sidelobe levels and efficient adjacent beam overlap are generated by employing an offset parabolic reflector with overlapping feed clusters. The beam shape can be adapted to cancel either single- or multiple-jammers by varying excitations within the feed cluster corresponding to the beam. Development of antenna components including Potter horn, polarizer, phase-amplitude controller, and beamforming network is discussed. Measured results of the demonstration antenna have shown that sidelobe and crosspolar levels of better than -25 dB are achieved for beams scanned over an eight-degree diameter circular coverage region. The adapted patterns of the antenna agree well with the computations, and null depths of better than 30 dB have been realized over a 4.5% bandwidth.>