Antenna Feeder Link for Very High Throughput Satellites

This paper presents a simple and compact antenna feeder link (AFL) designed for efficiently transmitting and receiving electromagnetic signals in beam-forming networks (BFN) of very high throughput satellites (VHTS) operating in the V-band. Compared to existing solutions, this straightforward design is less complex, easier to manufacture, and extremely small in size; in particular, the radiating element only has an aperture area of 1.8 λ with 91 % efficiency. The AFL system achieves dual circular polarization, a return loss better than 15 dB, and a directive gain of approximately 14 dBi across the frequency range of 47.2 GHz to 52.4 GHz, making it highly suitable for high-performance satellite applications.