All.space Networks Ltd.

Brian M Billman

Jeremiah P Turpin

John Finney

Clinton P Scarborough

Vikas Sharma

Sebastian Diebold

Daniel F DiFonzo

Daniel Francis DiFonzo

A circuit has at least one amplifier and a signal routing device such as one or more switches, and an array of antenna elements from which some subset must be enabled and processed at a time. The antenna elements can be grouped in accordance with an organization scheme (e.g., rows, columns) to enable more flexibility in selecting and routing the signals. The system is used to create one or more beams, which can be pointed (steered) to a wide range of directions by means of selecting one or more feed antennas in a switched-feed antenna without including full receive and transmit circuitry (DSP, frequency conversion) for each feed in the array. In this case, minimizing the number of DSP chains is desirable to reduce the cost, power, and complexity of the antenna. The resulting beam(s) can be combined and manipulated to support multiple users, track several targets, increase operational range, increase radar resolution, or data-rate in communications.

Circuit and system apparatus for synthesizing one or multiple beams on a switched-feed antenna

A multi-band antenna system that includes a first antenna array and a second antenna array. The first antenna array includes a plurality of lens sets, each including a lens and feed element(s) configured to transmit and/or receive electromagnetic signals that pass through the lens. The second antenna array includes a plurality of antenna elements, each disposed between two of the lenses of the first array.

Multi-band lens antenna system

A ground antenna determines the current time and its own position from received signals that were transmitted by artificial earth satellites for communication. A high-gain multi-beam electrically-steered antenna is combined with a processing system to measure the angles between two or more satellites and determine the present distance to each satellite by the information broadcast on the TT&C channel. The knowledge of the angles and distances, as well as the trajectory of the satellites, can be combined with their locations as predicted by the satellite ephemeris data to triangulate the location of the receiver. This system is different from conventional GPS antennas because it does not require the cooperation of active communication with the satellites to derive a location estimate. The location is computed by the ground terminal, not by the satellite. This system can be used in cases where other locating services are offline, jammed, or otherwise unavailable to maintain location and time synchronization.

Non-cooperative position, navigation, and timing extraction from VSAT communications signals using multi-beam phased array antenna

A field-assembled satellite communications terminal has a plurality of discrete, modular aperture blocks. Each aperture block contains an electrically steered antenna aperture, and a plurality of interconnection ports for power and data communications between the plurality of aperture blocks. The plurality of interconnection ports are removably connectable by the end user in the field. The terminal further has a signal processing system for receiving, processing, and generating signals to and from the apertures. The aperture blocks are connected to each other in the field and self-configure to form an electrically-steered antenna.

Field-assembled modular phased array SATCOM terminal

A hybrid mechanical-lens array antenna is described that can be configured with different orientations and arrangements of the plurality of lenses within the array to control and enhance the performance at different regions of scan. This can include the addition of a secondary array (a skirt) at a large tilt angle, tilting the primary array, tilting the individual lenses within the primary array, or any combination. These design choices, when holding the number of lens modules (and, therefore, cost and power consumption) constant, have the effect of changing the system height, reducing the boresight gain and increasing the gain at scan, with each option showing different trades of height and scan and boresight performance.

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Baltimore, MD, United States of America

Brian M Billman