GDPAA Advanced Technology Demonstration overview and results

The United States Air Force (USAF), through the Air Force Research Laboratories (AFRL) and the Space and Missile Command (SMC), has been working with the aerospace industry to develop technologies to incorporate the rapid beam pointing capabilities and multi-beam pointing capabilities of electronically steered arrays (ESA) to the Air Force Satellite Control Network (AFSCN). Investigations at AFRL have indicated that an ESA can be a low-cost solution to provide increased capability to AFSCN to meet growing capacity needs. Additional AFRL studies have indicated that spherical array geometry is optimal for ground-based satellite control antennas for performance and deployment cost of an ESA. An innovative Geodesic Dome Phased Array Antenna (GDPAA) was put forth as a significant and viable improvement to the conventional, 50-year-old parabolic reflector antenna systems currently in use. This paper summarizes the design and development of the GDPAA Advanced Technology Demonstration (ATD) program at Ball Aerospace and presents the results of demonstration testing performed at Schriever Air Force Base (SAFB).