Geodesic sphere phased arrays for LEO satellite communications

The invention of the geodesic sphere phased array antenna, a new low cost phased array antenna concept for multi-band, multi-satellite communication with omni-directional scan coverage is described. Two specific practical architectures-one, based on the regular icosahedron, a Platonic solid and the other based on the truncated icosahedron-an Archimedean solid are considered. The phased array consists of a multiplicity of planar triangular subarrays arranged in the geodesic sphere configuration. The communication space is subdivided into smaller cellular regions corresponding to the geodesic sphere arrangement. An appropriate section of contiguous subarrays is energized to form a beam to scan the corresponding cellular space.