SATELLITE MULTIBEAM COVERAGE OF EARTH: INNOVATIVE SOLUTIONS AND OPTIMAL SYNTHESIS OF APERTURE FIELDS

The problem of the synthesis of optimal continuous aperture sources to optimally realize the satellite multibeam coverage of Earth is stated and solved. The design approach relies on a far-field representation which exploits at best the degrees of freedom arising from the geometrical structure of the well-known four-colors coverage map. The overall synthesis is stated as a Convex Programming problem wherein the fast achievement of the (unique) globally optimal solution is guaranteed. The introduced tools allow stating the ultimate theoretical radiation performances achievable by any circular-aperture antenna of fixed size and, at the same time, can be exploited as a reference in the synthesis of isophoric direct-radiating arrays. Numerical examples concerning a mission scenario recently proposed by the European Space Agency are provided.