Signal Processing and Communications Group

Cost-Optimised high performance active Receive Phase Array antenna for mobile terminals

Acronym:    CORPA
Code:    AO/1-4746/05/NL/JD
Funder:    Private Company
Company:    European Space Agency
Start date:    2006 May 15th
End date:    2008 September 15th
    
Partners:    Instituto de Telecomunicacaos, Satellite Services BV, Space Services CE Lda. and TriaGnoSys
SPCOM Participants:    David Bernal Casas, Pau Closas Gómez and Juan Fernández Rubio
SPCOM Responsible:    Juan Fernández Rubio

Summary

A current problem of mobile terminals for data applications at the L/S/C frequency bands is the size and shape of the antenna. These antennas are currently mainly mechanically steerable in both azimuth and/or elevation, to be cost competitive. This makes them rather bulky and of limited interest for a larger market. Antenna system specially designed for cars, trains, ships and airplanes are needed to receive signals to communicate via satellites on customer demand. Conformal, phased array antennas utilising digital beam forming can provide an attractive solution for medium gain antennas. In such antenna, each patch will be equipped with a separate LNB, down-conversion, analogue-to-digital converter and some signal processing platform will be in charge of antenna array weights computation for interference mitigation. In the frame of the S-DMB system the project considers the design, manufacturing and test of a vehicle antenna, utilising Digital Beamforming (DBF) for providing multimedia reception in S-band. Antenna system specially designed for cars, trains, ships and airplanes are needed to receive signals to communicate via satellites on customer demand.

Conference publications

[1] P. Closas Gómez, C. Fernandez Prades, J. Fernández Rubio and I. Aad, "Direct Position Estimation: How Good Can it Get?", Institute of Navigation Satellite Division Technical Meeting, September 2009.

[2] C. Fernandez Prades, P. Closas Gómez, J. Fernández Rubio and I. Aad, "A Statistical Detector of Multipath and Interferences for Antenna-array based GNSS Receivers", Institute of Navigation Satellite Division Technical Meeting, September 2009.

[3] D. Bernal Casas, P. Closas Gómez, E. Calvo Page and J. Fernández Rubio, "A Convex Optimization Algorithm for Tight GNSS/INS Integration: An Alternative to Kalman Filtering", Institute of Navigation Satellite Division Technical Meeting, September 2009.

[4] J. Arribas, D. Bernal Casas, C. Fernandez Prades, P. Closas Gómez and J. Fernández Rubio, "A Novel Real-time Platform for Digital Beamforming with GNSS Software Defined Receivers", Institute of Navigation Satellite Division Technical Meeting, September 2009.

[5] P. Closas Gómez, C. Fernandez Prades and J. Fernández Rubio, "Direct Position Estimation outperforms conventional two-steps positioning", European Signal Processing Conference, August 2009.

[6] D. Bernal Casas, P. Closas Gómez, E. Calvo Page and J. Fernández Rubio, "Tight GNSS/INS Integration as a Constrained Least-Squares problem", European Signal Processing Conference, August 2009.

[7] A. Pellón, N. Carvalho, O. Lücke, P. Closas Gómez, J. Fernández Rubio, G. Sims and L. Salghetti Drioli, "Design of Cost-Optimised Active Receive Array Antenna for Mobile Satellite Terminals", International Conference on Electromagnetics in Advanced Applications, September 2007, pp. 719 - 722.

[8] O. Lücke, A. Pellón, P. Closas Gómez and J. Fernández Rubio, "Cost-Optimised Active Receive Array Antenna for Mobile Satellite Terminals", IST Summit on Mobile and Wireless Communications, July 2007.

[9] A. Pellón, N. Carvalho, O. Lücke, P. Closas Gómez, J. Fernández Rubio, G. Sims and L. Salghetti Drioli, "Design of Cost-Optimised Active Receive Array Antenna for Mobile Satellite Terminals", ESA Antenna Workshop on Multiple Beams and Reconfigurable Antennas, April 2007.

Books

[1] O. Lücke, A. Pellón, P. Closas Gómez and J. Fernández Rubio, "Cost-Optimised Active Receive Array Antenna for Mobile Satellite Terminals. Chapter 10: Advances in Mobile and Wireless Communications", Springer, Volume 16, June 2008, pp. 185 - 204.