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The United States of America as Represented by the Administrator of the

Mobile Satellite Ventures, LP

Probir Kumar Bondyopadhyay

Invention of electronic cluster scanning method for Geodesic Sphere Phased Array Antenna System that is simultaneously faster cheaper and simpler is presented in this patent. This invention is based on recognition and skillful exploitation of multi-level symmetry properties inherent in the truncated icosahedron based geodesic sphere phased array antenna structure described in an earlier invention. The cluster scanning method employs cluster switching with limited angle electronic scanning involving inter-twined hexagonal sub-array centered clusters and pentagonal sub-array centered clusters.

High speed cluster scanning with geodesic sphere phased array antenna system

A quadrifilar helix antenna used to transmit and receive wireless signals may include a number of inductively loaded antenna elements. The antenna elements may be helically wound around a cylindrical structure.

Miniaturized quadrifilar helix antenna

A geodesic sphere phased array antenna system, capable of scanning the entire omni-directional communication space and comprising substantially equilateral triangular planar subarrays of antenna elements arranged in a geodesic sphere configuration. Icosahedron, one of the five regular solids and truncated icosahedron, one of the fifteen semi-regular solids are the preferred basis of the geodesic sphere phased array construction. The entire communication space is considered as subdivided into a large number of smaller cells and corresponding to each such cellular communication space, a contiguous set of the subarrays is energized and electronically phased to scan the cellular space. Another contiguous set of subarrays is energized and electronically phased to scan another cellular space in a similar manner resulting in limited angle scanning requirements which permit the basic antenna elements to be connected in a cluster as a unit building block to which transmit/receive signal distribution and processing means are connected resulting in lower costs in deployment, operation and maintenance.

Geodesic sphere phased array antenna system

A microstrip antenna for radiating circularly polarized electromagnetic waves comprising a cluster array (20) of at least four microstrip radiator elements (22a-22d), each of which is provided with dual orthogonal coplanar feeds in phase quadrature relation achieved by connection to an asymmetric T-junction power divider (30) impedance notched at resonance. The dual fed circularly polarized reference element is positioned with its axis at a 45.degree. angle with respect to the unit cell axis. The other three dual fed elements in the unit cell are positioned and fed with a coplanar feed structure with sequential rotation and phasing to enhance the axial ratio and impedance matching performance over a wide bandwidth. The centers of the radiator elements are disposed at the corners of a square with each side of a length d in the range of 0.7 to 0.9 times the free space wavelength of the antenna radiation and the radiator elements reside in a square unit cell area of sides equal to 2d and thereby permit the array to be used as a phased array antenna for electronic scanning and is realizable in a high temperature superconducting thin film material for high efficiency.

Growing community of inventors

Houston, TX, United States of America

Probir Kumar Bondyopadhyay