Satellite multibeam antennas at airbus defence and space: State of the art and trends

This paper presents a survey of the current state of the art of multi beam antennas applied for mobile, broad band and regional broadcasting services. The pros and cons of the different architectures, like single feed per beam, multi feed per beam or direct radiating and imaging arrays are discussed and representative examples for the different architectures produced or currently under production at Airbus Defence and Space are presented. The paper concludes with an outlook on potential developments towards antennas with increased flexibility.