Q/V-Band Distributed Scalable DBF Antenna with Direct Digital Transceiver for LEO Constellation Satellites

For future Japanese Low Earth Orbit (LEO) constellation satellite communication., explore of new frequency band (Q/V-band) in millimeter-wave is required. In order to obtain flexible beam forming function., Q/V-band on-board digital beam forming (DBF) antenna is now under development. In this paper., outline of our targeted Q/V-band LEO constellation satellite communication system and transceiver architecture based on direct digital RF are described. In the case of digital rich direct digital RF transceiver., the size of digital signal processor becomes a problem. To solve this., a new distributed scalable DBF antenna system is proposed. The proposed antenna configuration can significantly reduce the computational complexity of digital signal processing for Tx/Rx DBF and Tx 1-bit bandpass delta-sigma modulation.