Low-Profile Dielectric Dome Concepts for Enlarging the Scanning Range of the AIDAN SATCOM Airborne Terminal: Trade-Off Analysis

The trend for SATCOM user terminals in the professional market goes towards flexible, low-profile solutions that utilize phased array antennas. To maintain connectivity also in long haul flights at extreme latitudes a large beam-steering capability is needed. In this paper, a dual surface dielectric dome is investigated with the purpose of enlarging the field-of-view of Viasat AIDAN SATCOM terminal. With respect to state-of-the-art dome designs, focus of this work was in reducing the overall dome profile. The paper presents an analysis of the performance trade-offs for several choices of the dome geometrical parameters, taking into account the size constraints imposed by the application.