Multiple Aperture Beam Tracking

The proposed pointing and tracking system will leverage from existing commercial off the shelf GPS technology in order to keep the cost, complexity, and risk to a minimum. It will be shown that while commercial systems exist that can perform similar functions, changes to the system and in particular the antennas are required to achieve the necessary performance. The tracking and communication antennas do not have to be collocated. In addition, the tracking antennas can be mounted away from the busy centerline of the A/C. This will mitigate the issue of finding an appropriate installation location for the antennas. The proposed program is intended to demonstrate feasibility of the proposed pointing and tracking scheme with fabrication and test of a system in a realistic environment simulating the top of a typical Air Force platform. We intend to deliver a functioning system at the end of the phase two effort. We believe success of the proposed program will solve one of the important problems in mobile broadband satellite communications.