Stabilization of Beams of a Large-Size Satellite Antenna by Adaptive Adjusting of Hexagonal Seven-Element Clusters

The issues of the paper are the procedure for stabilizing the characteristics of a large-sized multi-beam hybrid parabolic antenna subjected to operational burdens and its effectiveness. Stabilization is due to adapting the excitation distribution of clusters, called additional focusing. Adjusting not only the distribution, but also the position of hexagonal clusters, if necessary, significantly improves the results. The averaged and worst-case gain values for a series of reflector deformations give a quantitative measure of the stabilization effect. Additional focusing reduces the average gain loss from 1.6 dB to 0.1 ... 0.2 dB.