Phased array for maritime satcom applications

A phased array has been designed for maritime satellite communication applications. The antenna consists of 26 patch elements that are mounted on a nearly spherical aperture. The antenna allows full duplex communication via L-band satellite systems like Inmarsat BGAN or Thuraya. This design is an innovative and powerful alternative to current mechanically steered systems. Intermediate results of this antenna design were already presented in previous papers [1;4]. This current paper gives an update on the status of this project and shows the results of the final demonstrator.