Towards Optimal Design of the Ku-band Phased Array Antenna With Electronic Beam Steering

Modern phased array antennas with electronic beam steering are commonly based on planar antennas. In this work, we develop a separate receive-only, transmit-only antenna array for a newly deployed satellite constellation system operating in the Ku-band. Both receive-only and transmit-only arrays are based on circular polarized patch-antenna elements with the directors. In both arrays, we optimized element sizes and array period to have optimal ellipticity, gain, and sidelobe level. In addition, we added an inter-element metallic screen to improve the isolation between the elements. In electromagnetic simulations, we achieved a realized gain of 32 dBi for the receiveonly array and 33 dBi for the transmit-only array obtained in a broad elevation angle range of
$\pm\boldsymbol{45}^{\circ}$
.