RF front-end design of a planar broadband phased array for satellite reception

This work describes the architectural design of the RF front-end of a hybrid phased array antenna for Ku-band satellite reception. The array will include RF - as well as optical components and can be divided into 2 separate parts: one RF-frontend and one optical part. The focus within this paper is on the RF-frontend, especially the integration of active RF-components and the radiating elements in a planar multilayer stack-up, while taking the link-budget requirements into consideration. First layouts and measurements are discussed, and a first impression of a 64 antenna element module is presented.