A Steerable Spot Beam Reflector Antenna for Geostationary Satellites

A steerable spot beam reflector antenna deployed along the east/west sides of the satellite is discussed in this letter. The steerable spot beam can be quickly repositioned to provide a flexible coverage by rotating the reflector only around its vertex (called “Vertex Rotation”), which has many advantages such as excellent electrical performances, simple mechanical structure, light weight, and low cost. The antenna design procedures as well as the measurement results are presented. Within the steering range of ±8.0
^°
, this antenna shows the scan loss, sidelobe level (SLL), cross-polarization (XP) level, and pointing accuracy of 0.6 dB, -25.9 dB, -26.2 dB, and 0.04
^°
/axis, respectively, and is highly suitable for geostationary satellite payloads.