Digital Beamforming in a large conformal Phased Array Antenna for satellite operations support — Architecture, design, and development

This paper describes the development of Digital Beamforming (DBF) architectures, techniques, and hardware performance demonstrations that can be incorporated into the Geodesic Dome Phased Array Antenna (GDPAA), a large multi-beam conformal phasedarray antenna. The DBF system can provide functions for satellite Tracking, Telemetry and Commanding (TT&C), with significant improvements in adaptive pattern control for anti-jamming or interference suppression control, direction finding with high-resolution, ultra low sidelobes, and flexible antenna resource management and beam scheduler. For most of the design, Commercial Off-the-Shelf (COTS) components were used to reduce costs and complexity. Three (3) candidates DBF architectures were analyzed and compared with respect to their performance, complexity and cost. For the selected (optimal) architecture the key COTS components were evaluated and the results are reported.