Realization of simple antenna system for ETS-VIII mobile satellite communications

This paper presents a simple antenna system for land vehicle communication aimed at Engineering Test Satellite-VIII (ETS-VIII) applications. The developed antenna system which mounted into a vehicle is compact, light weight and simple satellite-tracking operation. Owing to low profile, a patch array antenna, which includes onboard-power divider and switching circuit for antenna feeding control, is applied at such system. A Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver is constructed to provide accurate information on the vehicle´s position and bearing during travelling. The personal computer (PC) interfaces as the control unit and data acquisition, which specifically designed for this application, allow the antenna beam-switching control as well as the retrieving of the received power levels. Measured results of the received power levels as well as the bit error rate performance for satellite-tracking are discussed.