Space Antenna Handbook

Chapter 18

Space Antenna Challenges for Future Missions, Key Techniques and Technologies

Cyril Mangenot¹ and William A. Imbriale²

¹ESTEC-ESA The Netherlands

²Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology USA

18.1 Overview of Chapter Contents

This chapter aims to identify the future needs and promising concepts for space antennas. This is quite a challenge. When asked to perform this exercise, the authors considered several ways of presenting their findings. Among them the following classifications were envisaged:

• By products (reflectors, arrays, radiators, etc.): This is a natural choice; nevertheless there is a risk that the product definition and challenges differ significantly with the application. As an example, a direct radiating array will have a high maturity level when used for synthetic aperture radar. However, when considered for a broadcast telecommunication mission, there are several key issues still to be solved, such as power consumption/dissipation, mass, and beam-forming network complexity for a large number of beams. Another consideration is the classification of array-fed reflectors. That is, where to put them? Should they be classified as reflectors or arrays? Finally the same consideration applies for radiators/feeds that are used in both arrays and reflectors.
• By applications (telecommunications, Earth observation, etc.): This is well in line with the actual situation where the antenna design is optimized for a given mission and there are ...