A New Era in Elemental Digital Beamforming for Spaceborne Communications Phased Arrays

This paper discusses the advantages of digital beamforming (DBF), both generally and specific to satellite communications antennas, and briefly describes some of its early implementations. A discussion of recent advances in analog-to-digital converter (ADC) technology is followed by a description of the basic DBF functionality and tradeoffs in functional partitioning in a DBF array. The application of DBF to a heritage phased array is described to illustrate the benefits of DBF for spaceborne phased arrays. Finally, technology options for DBF implementation in a spaceborne phased array are considered.