A Ka-band / n261 band Dual-Scan Phased Array Antenna for Application in LEO Satellite Constellations

Recent deployments of satellite constellations have taken an increased interest in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) owing to the advantages of lower path loss, lower latency in terms of the propagation delay and coverage of concentrated pockets of area. Due to the nature of these orbits, antennas on the ground station with the ability to scan over wide angles is necessitated. Phased array antennas are the ideal candidates in such a scenario owing to their low cost, low profile and wide-angle scanning performance. In this paper, a phased array antenna is designed and presented to operate around the n261 band of 5GNRFR2 and the 28 GHz Ka-band with an azimuthal beamscanning range of 50° on either side of the boresight. There is also a symmetric elevation scan around boresight of +/-25° attained without the use of phase shifters. The antenna element consists of a multilayer series aperture coupled antenna fed by a meander line. It offers good performance in terms of beamscanning cost as the phase shifter requirement is reduced, owing to the use of frequency scanning in elevation and phase scanning only in the azimuth, drastically reducing the cost. The phased array has a good total efficiency around 80%. The antenna has been designed and its performance validated by full wave simulations in the solver CST Studio Suite.