An Antenna Array for the Galileo System with Beamforming Capabilities

Kurzfassung

Future navigation services provided by the upcoming Galileo satellite system will require corresponding improvements on the navigation receiving systems. The first part of any navigation receiving system is the antenna or antenna terminal. In order to obtain the best possible navigation accuracy, exploiting the full capabilities offered by this new system, the design of state-of-the-art antenna systems must be pursuit. This contribution shows the beamforming capabilities of a broadband antenna array designed for the whole Galileo frequency band. In addition, a brief description on the front-end design is presented. The employed beamforming approach, performed by a software developed in DLR, considers a combination of an optimized Chebychev pattern with the Sample Matrix Inversion (SMI) algorithm. It allows the calculation of the excitation currents needed to steer the main beam of an antenna array at the same time it suppresses the side lobe levels to a desired value and generates nulls in the directions where interferers are incoming. The paper begins with a brief description of the antenna array and its antenna element. Then, the construction concepts are commented. Finally, a number of results concerning the beamforming capabilities of the antenna array are shown and discussed.