IEEE - Aerospace and Electronic Systems - February 2022 - 42

Multibeam Antennas With Reflector for High Throughput Satellite Applications
Figure 19.
Eutelsat 172B satellite [30] and Ku-band multiple spot beams
layout [31].
Figure 21.
ViaSat-1 antenna system (left) [33] and ViaSat-2 satellite
(right) [34].
Figure 20.
Ka-band multibeam layout of ViaSat-1 (left) [33] and ViaSat-2
coverage (right) [35].
multispot user beams to serve areas of densely-used Asian
and trans-Pacific flight routes. The multispot beams layout
of Eutelsat 172B is shown in Figure 19, which consists
of 11 Ku-band high throughput beams with the beamwidth
of 2.5.
VIASAT SERIES
VIASAT-1(2011)
ViaSat-1 [32], [33] was the highest throughput satellite
in the world when it was launched in 2011 with
140 Gb/s total throughput. And it is a geostationary Kaband
satellite built by Space Systems/Loral. SFPB with
the four-reflector method using combined Tx and Rx
antennas was used in the ViaSat-1 multibeam antenna
system achieving 72 Ka-band spot beams of 0.6 beamwidth
covering part of North America and Central
America, as illustrated in Figure 20. Dual reflectors
with the main reflector of 2.5 m diameter were used.
The picture of the ViaSat-1 multibeam antenna system
is presented in Figure 21.
VIASAT-2(2017)
ViaSat-2 [32], [34], [35] had seven times more coverage
than ViaSat-1, covering North America, Central America,
the Caribbean, and a part of northern South America and
the main aeronautical and maritime paths across the Atlantic
Ocean between North America and Europe as well in
GEO orbit, as shown in Figure 20. And the whole system
capacity was about 260 Gb/s, which almost doubled the
capacity of ViaSat-1 marking that the development of
42
Figure 22.
Satellite multibeam antenna system [36] and the coverage [37] of
Kacific-1.
HTS entered in a new era. The satellite is shown in
Figure 21. It can be seen that SFPB with four combined
Tx and Rx reflectors might be used.
VIASAT-3(2021)
The ViaSat-3 [32], a ultra HTS, was a highly advanced
global constellation consisting of three GEO ViaSat-3 satellites
and ground network infrastructure. The three ViaSat-3
satellites will separately cover the Americas first,
and then Europe, Middle East, and Africa, and the third
one will provide services to the Asia-Pacific customers.
And the first one is about to be launched in 2021. Each
ViaSat-3 satellite will offer total network capacity larger
than 1 Tb/s. Once accomplished, Viasat's global constellation
will provide broadband services to global market
dynamically with enormous throughput.
KACIFIC-1 (2019)
The GEO telecommunication satellite Kacific-1 [36], [37],
owned by Kacific and built by Boeing, provided highspeed
broadband services to South East Asia and the
Pacific Islands. The multibeam antenna system model and
the coverage of Kacific-1 are shown in Figure 22. A Total
of eight Ka-band reflector antennas in the SFPB method
are installed at the east and the west deck separately with
four in one back shelf. The whole system capacity is
60 Gb/s with 56 high throughput beams.
IEEE A&E SYSTEMS MAGAZINE
FEBRUARY 2022
IEEE - Aerospace and Electronic Systems - February 2022

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