2023/11/21 by Juan A. Vásquez-Peralvo, Juan Carlos Merlano Duncán, Vásquez-Peralvo, Juan A. +5
Engineering · #Antenna Design and Analysis #Antenna Design and Optimization #FOS: Electrical engineering #Satellite Communication Systems #Signal Processing (eess.SP) #electronic engineering #information engineering
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2311.12721
openalex publication_date 2023/11/21 · openalex created_date 2023/11/23 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Satellite swarms have recently gained attention in the space industry due to their ability to provide extremely narrow beamwidths at a lower cost than single satellite systems. This paper proposes a concept for a satellite swarm using a distributed subarray configuration based on a 2D normal probability distribution. The swarm comprises multiple small satellites acting as subarrays of a big aperture array limited by a radius of 20000 wavelengths working at a central frequency of 19 GHz. The main advantage of this approach is that the distributed subarrays can provide extremely directive beams and beamforming capabilities that are not possible using a conventional antenna and satellite design. The proposed swarm concept is analyzed, and the simulation results show that the radiation pattern achieves a beamwidth as narrow as 0.0015-degrees with a maximum side lobe level of 18.8 dB and a grating lobe level of 14.8 dB. This concept can be used for high data rates applications or emergency systems.