Parabolic Antenna Lens

Data transport between space platforms and Earth is vital to NASA mission success as well as commercial enterprises ranging from remote sensing to satellite-based television, radio, or data services. Throughput and data capture in all cases is subject to the availability and performance of ground network equipmentmdash;commonly a parabolic antenna. Efficiency across designs of parabolic antennas is typically in the 50-60% range due to a variety of losses, resulting in a loss of roughly half its theoretical potential to send and receive signals. Our proposed innovation is the application of anbsp;metasurfacenbsp;lens which augments the performance of the antenna by compensating for the phase and amplitude errors, engineering a medium with specific refractive indices at specific points on its surface. Metamaterials, composed of periodic subwavelength metal/dielectric structures that resonantly couple to the electric and/or magnetic components of the incident electromagnetic fields, exhibit negative and near-zero refractive indices to correct for phase and amplitude errors. Anbsp;metasurfacenbsp;lens, created from a single-layer or minimal-layer stack of planar metamaterial structures with subwavelength thickness, can introduce a spatially varying electromagnetic response, molding wavefronts into shapes that can be designed at will, correcting the phase and amplitude response of a signal. Thenbsp;metasurfacenbsp;antenna lens is expectednbsp;to result in efficiencies of 80-80% or greater depending on the antenna design. In this Phase I effort the material characteristics required for the textilenbsp;metasurfacenbsp;will be determined through analyses, as will the approach for mounting, installation, and integration of both a textile and planar lens. Performance will be characterized through modeling and simulation. The result of the effort will be an analysis and simulation-based recommendation for a prototype design and its expected performance.nbsp;