Development of dual-frequency airborne Satcom antenna with optical beamforming

For enhanced communication on board aircraft, novel antenna systems with broadband satellite-based capabilities are required. The amount of data agglomerated over a range of passenger services (VoIP, Web, Email, SMS, MMS) and over a range of flights, appears highly asymmetrical. The inbound traffic is about 5 times higher than the outbound. The inbound traffic requires the availability of a broadband Ku-band antenna in receive mode only. The outbound traffic services can be supplied by the Inmarsat SBB link, which requires the installation of an L-band transmit antenna. In order to avoid both the installation of L-band antenna and Ku-band antenna, the concept of a hybrid dual-frequency antenna operating both L-band and Ku-band is being explored in this paper.