Summary
International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation
2008
Session Number:4C36
Session:
Number:4C36-2
On-board evaluation results of Active Phased Array Antenna for WINDS satellite
Masanobu Yajima, Takumi Hasegawa, Tomonori Kuroda, Masaaki Shimada,
pp.-
Publication Date:2008/10/27
Online ISSN:2188-5079
Summary:
Phased Array Antennas (PAAs) have attracted attention for use as a hopping spot beam antennas that might be used as an electronically controllable onboard satellite antenna. In fact, a Ka band APAA [1] is installed on the KIZUNA (Wideband Internetworking engineering test and Demonstration Satellite: WINDS) [2] developed by JAXA and the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT). Actually, WINDS was developed to construct a high-speed satellite communication system and demonstrate the advanced technology that is necessary for formation of a satellite communications network. It was launched by an H-IIA Launch Vehicle in February 2008. The APAA comprises a transmitting (TX) array antenna and a receiving (RX) array antenna; each antenna has two hopping spot beams. Each beam’s direction can be controlled independently, flexibly and rapidly. These beams can also realize satellite switched time division multiple access (SS-TDMA) communication functions. The hopping spot beam function and SS-TDMA communication systems will be used for broadband communication experiments covering the Asia-Pacific region. This paper describes the WINDS APAA configuration, in addition to development results and on-board evaluation results of the APAA flight model.