A 108‐Element L‐Band Multiple Beamforming Digital Phased Array With Transceiver Shared Aperture for Low Earth Orbit Satellite Communication

ABSTRACT In this study, a 108‐element L‐band multiple beamforming digital phased array with transceiver shared aperture for LEO satellite communication is presented. A digital beam multiplexing and demultiplexing strategy is proposed to optimize elemental digital phased array architecture, which reduces the required numbers of ADCs and DACs to 33%. To enhance calibration efficiency and feasibility, a channel automatic calibration approach is proposed by incorporating transmit and receive calibration channels along with an internal reference signal generator. The array is capable to generate 56 beams based on 12 frequency multiplexing. Experimental results demonstrate that the beam coverage reaches as high as 99.91% at 25 dBW signal effective isotropic radiated power, and achieves up to 99.93% coverage at −7.8 dB/K, the ratio of gain‐to‐noise temperature.