Coherent power combining on spacecraft via wavefront multiplexing techniques

A novel orthogonal wavefront (WF) Multiplexing (Muxing) and De-Multiplexing (Demuxing) scheme as the pre-and post-processing method of a new WF transceiver is proposed for uplink from antenna array elements to multiple spacecraft (S/C). By using an adaptive equalizer at the receiver of S/C, the phase deviation due to different distances in the near field of the uplink from antenna array elements to S/C is compensated via the WF Demuxing method on S/C. Moreover, this feed-forward scheme allows power combining from antenna array transmitter to S/C, also this scheme can be extended and applied to multiple S/C. Simulations verify that the proposed scheme achieves the same bit error rate (BER) performance as the theoretical BER in additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channels. Although the radiated signals among the multiple radiating antenna array elements are non-coherent, the coherent power combining of the radiations of multiple radiating antenna array elements is accomplished on the S/C receiver.