Novel out-of-the-box concepts for future spaceborne antennas

This paper presents an overview of several novel ldquoout-of-the-boxrdquo concepts for future spaceborne antennas. Examples address utilization of sub-reflectarrays as corrective mechanism for spherical reflectors with very wide scan angle capabilities and MEMS controlled reflectarrays for large reflector surface distortion compensations. Also presented is the concept of back-to-back reflector antennas with either polarization-reducing matched feeds or twin feeds for high spinning platforms.