A perspective on future naval satcom antennas

There are numerous current problems associated with naval antenna systems that arise because of the large number of antennas that must be accommodated with the attendant problems such as electromagnetic interference and blockage. For naval satellite communications, the increasing requirements for bandwidth, multiple bands, and low observability exacerbate the existing problems. In this paper, approaches that address these issues are discussed. It is shown that the traditional use of one or two mechanically steered dishes with hemispheric scanning coverage will likely be transitioned to multiple antennas of reduced coverage area distributed about the ship. A variety of reduced-coverage antenna solutions, from phased arrays to novel low-profile scanned antennas, are compared