MULTI INPUT LNB – DEMONSTRATOR OF A REFLECTOR FEED ARRAY RECEIVER FOR SATELLITE BROADCAST RECEPTION

A demonstrator setup of a customized receiver antenna, a multi-input low noise block down-converter (MLNB) is presented in this paper. This antenna concept is based on a reflector feed array reception antenna for satellite Ku-band broadcast reception. In specific circumstances the Ku-band broadcast reception can be subject to interference form adjacent satellites give the customer demand for compact and easy to install reception antennas suitable for direct-to-home (DTH) reception. In this context a compact 45cm Ku-band reception antenna with coherent 3-element feed has been defined according to specific reception system requirements for broadcast system and setup and tested in the context of the ESA ARTES 5.2 Project. The demonstrator consist of an antenna prototype conceived by FTA Inverto for coherent reception of 3 feeds and a beamforming chipset from ASTRON operating in L-band and based on an NXP SiGe technology and chipset processes as well as beamforming control software from SES TechCom. Antenna measurements in a compact antenna test range (CATR) as well as over satellite demonstrate the achievable reception gain re-configurability which permits to adapt the broadcast antenna front end to different reception scenarios. The demonstrated benefits to satellite broadcast reception are to first provide an antenna system to mitigate adjacent satellite interference via reconfigure antenna gain nulling, second provide an antenna system for reception of any desired satellite signal within a given azimuth opening angle as well as third provide assistance at installation via an auto-fine-pointing procedure. This paper presents the demonstrator setup and justifies and explains the design choices in the context of the framing commercial requirements. Furthermore the antenna simulations and measurement results are presented here in view of the technical specification defined. The antenna re-configurability and control procedures are presented as well as the related reconf
QC 20121114