Tri-Band Ground Station Antenna for Earth Observation Satellites

Abstract

The need for increased downlink data rates and bandwidth for Earth Observation (EO) missions is driving mission planners to consider Ka-Band (25.5 to 27.0 GHz) downlinks to replace or augment the existing X-Band (8.025 to 8.400 GHz) services. Future ground stations will be required to support both bands as well as S-Band (2.0-2.3) GHz telemetry and command functions. This paper discusses the inherent tradeoffs in such a design, and proposes an implementation which permits simultaneous data reception in X-Band and Ka-Band, while providing TT&C functionality at S-Band. Analytical and measured data for the implementation are provided.