Metal 3D-Printed High-Performance Radiating Panel for SATCOM AESA Terminals

This article presents a new design approach for phased array SATCOM terminals, which is based on full-metal miniature horns connected to active planar beamforming circuits. Such new approach is characterized by better radiation efficiency than other examples in the state-of-the-art and is expected to enable terminals with smaller size and lower power consumption. To validate the concept, the article presents a design example that operates in Ka-band (19.2-21.2 GHz, RX operation) and where the full-metal aperture is fabricated using 3D printing. The results include infinite array simulations and measurements on a reduced-size AESA tile.