A method to control phased array antenna for rain fading mitigation of 21-GHz band broadcasting satellite

Satellite broadcasting in the 21-GHz band is expected to transmit large-capacity signals. We have been studying rain fading mitigation techniques in order to compensate large amount of rain attenuation. In this paper, we show a method to control the radiation pattern dynamically in accordance with the movement of the rain area assuming array-fed reflector antenna using 61 horns and a reflector with the aperture diameter of 2.2 m. Then we compared the number of the outage areas using dynamically controlled radiation pattern formed by the array-fed reflector antenna with that using static radiation pattern formed by shaped reflector antenna while assuming the same input power to the antenna. According to the simulation during 7 days, the accumulated number of outage points using dynamic radiation pattern was reduced to less than 50% compared to that using static radiation pattern.