Fibonacci Tessellation for Optimizing Planar Phased Arrays in Satellite Communications

This article presents a novel strategy for the design of planar phased arrays using Fibonacci-based partitioning combined with a random multi-objective search. This approach intends to minimize the number of phase shifters used by the system while maintaining the radiation characteristics required for Ku-band user terminals in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite communications. This methodology efficiently tessellates a 16×16 antenna array, reducing the solution search space size and improving algorithmic computational time. From a total of 409,600 possible configurations, an optimal candidate solution was obtained in 2 h. This configuration achieves a balanced trade-off between radiation performance metrics, including side lobe level (SLL), first null beamwidth (FNBW), and the number of phase shifters. This optimal design maintains a value of SLL below −15 dB across all the azimuth scanning angles, with a beam steering capability of θ=−40∘ and 0∘≤ϕ≤360∘. These results demonstrate the suitability of this novel approach regarding Ku-band satellite communications, providing efficient and practical solutions for high-demand internet services via LEO satellite systems.