Digital Beamforming Phased Array Antenna Systems for Increased Satellite Communication Ground System Capacity and Resiliency

Proliferated satellite architectures hold promise to expand mission capability but challenge existing ground system capacity because the majority of today’s ground parabolic antenna systems are limited to a single satellite contact a time. To address this mission need, L3Harris has developed an all-digital phased array antenna that forms beams using Digital Signal Processing (DSP) resources versus physically moving a traditional parabolic antenna or steering analog complex weights. This enterprise antenna solution is highly scalable in number of simultaneous beams (by increasing DSP resources), RF performance such as G/T and EIRP (by increasing number of antenna elements), and frequencies (by adding co-located antenna sub-arrays). The same system also increases mission resiliency through built-in capability to utilize excess beam capacity to search for RF interference and mitigate that interference through spatial nulling. As part of a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Environmental Satellite Data and Information Service (NESDIS), L3Harris deployed a prototype L/S-band phased array antenna prototype to the Fairbanks Command and Data Acquisition Station (FCDAS) for a period of three months demonstrating the system’s capability to support eight simultaneous satellite contacts from a single system. This presentation will summarize the prototype phased array capability, deployment approach, and satellite contacts supported during the three month CRADA demonstration and characterization period at FCDAS.