Geostationary Array Fed Actuated Mesh Reflector with Jamming Suppression

This paper describes how an electrostatic actuation technique for dynamic reshaping of a reflector surface can be leveraged for jamming suppression with an array feed. Current space-based antenna array systems are susceptible to jamming of the desired signal in communications-denied environments, from both earth- and space-based systems. Actuation of the surface such that the focal length of the dished reflector can be adjusted and the surface perturbed dynamically on-orbit permits suppression of jamming nulls that can saturate the lownoise amplifier. This can provide comparable robustness to that of a larger gain planar array, but with far fewer elements, accordingly resulting in size, weight and power savings. Here, we show an example of how a null can be generated to suppress a jamming null, by perturbing the surface of the reflector. The dished reflector shape can be designed by computing the optical coefficients of the Zernike polynomial. Further work will expand this approach to address multiple nulls, and quickly compute the electrode voltages needed to create the required reflector shapes.