Effects of sattelite spin on ground-received signal

This report presents an analysis of those characteristics of the radio signal received on the ground from an artificial earth satellite which are caused by satellite spin. It is shown that if the spin axis of the satellite does not coincide with the axis of symmetry of the satellite antenna system, a CW transmitted signal will be split into three closely spaced spectral components in a manner similar to the Zeeman effect in atomic spectra. The relative amplitudes of the three spectral components are calculated for various combinations of satellite antenna type, ground antenna type, antenna observation angle, and angle between the spin axis and antenna symmetry axis of the satellite, and the significance of these results is discussed.