Generation of Custom Shaped Beams with Digital Beam Forming in Focal Array Fed Reflector Antenna Systems

This paper presents detailed design guidelines for generating custom-shaped beams using Digital Beam Forming (DBF) in focal array-fed reflector antennas. The DBF enabled antenna system has been demonstrated to generate beams of various shapes, sizes and quantity. This ensures that the payload is flexible and reconfigurable so that the antenna radiation pattern can be altered to meet the ever-evolving needs and demands of the users. The characteristics of the generated antenna radiation pattern are governed by the excitation coefficients generated by the DBF processor, which are fed to the input of each array element. An optimization algorithm has been developed to determine these coefficients and optimize them in order to generate the specific shape and size of the required beam. A focal arrayfed reflector has been designed and the formation of different custom shaped beams has been demonstrated in this work. Such reconfigurable and flexible payloads find applications in the fields of satellite communications, remote sensing, broadcast services and tracking techniques.