Satellite Tracking Using 7X7Hexagonal Phased Array Antenna

Satellite communications positively impact everything we do. A large number of the more up to date satellites will be little and heavenly bodies will fly in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) and a significant number of these constellations will have vast amounts of satellites flying, adding noteworthy unpredictability to the communication applications. Placement of a steerable antenna array exhibiting higher directivity and increased gain in Low Earth Orbit adds to decreased ground station complexity, cost, and a reasonable budget still kept up. Beam steering antennas like phased array antennas are the ideal solution for the tracking of the satellite over full hemisphere coverage. Antennas deployed in ground station must continuously steer the beam towards satellite for continuous tracking till the signal from satellite falls below the threshold level. Antennas must have all its gain in a specific direction in order to achieve efficient tracking. This paper presents satellite tracking using phased array antenna. The proposed system comprises of hexagonal shaped 7×7 antenna array containing 37 elements having a triangular lattice structure is configured. Phased array antennas comprise of inbuilt phase shifters to get the constructive beam in the desired direction. Back lobe suppression method is used to nullify the beams in the undesired direction for efficient tracking of the satellite. A Scenario of satellite tracking is created with the required configurations and has been tested in terms of efficient tracking performance and the number of access from facility to satellite has been recorded.