Performance of Earth Station Antennas Located in a Clutter Environment

Until fairly recently satellite earth stations antenna were located in open sites and so any performance degradation due to clutter was negligible. However, the growing demand of satellite communication services has resulted in a need for more ground stations, which are often located in compact urban sites. Moreover once an urban site is chosen there is strong economic and urban planning pressure to place as many earth station antennas on that site as possible. This means that clutter resulting from nearby buildings as well as other earth stations can become a serious problem, degrading the antenna pattern such that it can be outside the allowed specification of a given satellite operator. We report here an efficient technique to analyze the performance of an earth station antenna located in a clutter environment.