Actions for Wavefront Correction for Large, Flexible Antenna Reflector

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Wavefront Correction for Large, Flexible Antenna Reflector

Author
FROM
Published
May 2010.
Physical Description
1 electronic document
Additional Creators
Rajagopalan, Harish, Jammejad, Vahraz, Xu, Shenheng, and Imbriale, William A.
Online Version

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Unclassified, Unlimited, Publicly available.
Free-to-read Unrestricted online access
Summary
A wavefront-correction system has been proposed as part of an outer-space radio communication system that would include a large, somewhat flexible main reflector antenna, a smaller subreflector antenna, and a small array feed at the focal plane of these two reflector antennas. Part of the wavefront-correction system would reside in the subreflector, which would be a planar patch-element reflectarray antenna in which the phase shifts of the patch antenna elements would be controlled via microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) radio -frequency (RF) switches. The system would include the following sensing-and-computing subsystems: a) An optical photogrammetric subsystem built around two cameras would estimate geometric distortions of the main reflector; b) A second subsystem would estimate wavefront distortions from amplitudes and phases of signals received by the array feed elements; and c) A third subsystem, built around small probes on the subreflector plane, would estimate wavefront distortions from differences among phases of signals received by the probes. The distortion estimates from the three subsystems would be processed to generate control signals to be fed to the MEMS RF switches to correct for the distortions, thereby enabling collimation and aiming of the received or transmitted radio beam to the required precision.
Other Subject(s)
Collection
NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS) Collection.
Note
Document ID: 20100019592.
NPO-46053.
NASA Tech Briefs, May 2010; 11.
Terms of Use and Reproduction
Copyright, Distribution as joint owner in the copyright.
View MARC record | catkey: 16410840