Analysis of a novel antenna array for vehicular reception of Ku-Band satellite signals

Abstract

A fast-growing percentage of vehicles are connected by mobile data service technologies. Up to now most of these connections are based on cellular phone standards. The drawbacks of this method to connect the vehicles are: The limited availability of the underlying data networks and the amount of parallel point to point connections needed to cover all users with extensively similar data. A novel approach to overcome these issues is using a ubiquitously available broadcast medium for general downlink data. For this medium the Ku-Band satellite link has been chosen, as it is well developed, ubiquitously available and cheap compared to other satellite broadcast services. The general advantage of broadcasts is that spectrum has to be bought only once, even for thousands of receiving vehicles. Up to now the receiving antenna for the vehicle hindered integration in commercial cars. The problem resulted from a lack of gain, reliability or from inappropriately large manufacturing expenses. This document proposes an array that overcomes these issues and lists the simulation results for a rectangular array of thirty-six elements.