Beam Tracking for UAV Mounted SatCom on-the-Move with Massive Antenna Array

TL;DR

This paper introduces a blind beam tracking method for UAV-mounted satellite communication systems with massive antennas, improving beam stability and pointing accuracy amid UAV navigation challenges.

Contribution

It proposes a novel blind beam tracking approach combining mechanical adjustment with an array-based perturbation algorithm for precise beam pointing.

Findings

The method outperforms existing beam tracking techniques in simulations.

Real-time attitude data fusion enhances beam stabilization.

Electrical adjustment refines beam pointing accuracy effectively.

Abstract

Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-satellite communication has drawn dramatic attention for its potential to build the integrated space-air-ground network and the seamless wide-area coverage. The key challenge to UAV-satellite communication is its unstable beam pointing due to the UAV navigation, which is a typical SatCom on-the-move scenario. In this paper, we propose a blind beam tracking approach for Ka-band UAVsatellite communication system, where UAV is equipped with a large-scale antenna array. The effects of UAV navigation are firstly released through the mechanical adjustment, which could approximately point the beam towards the target satellite through beam stabilization and dynamic isolation. Specially, the attitude information can be realtimely derived from data fusion of lowcost sensors. Then, the precision of the beam pointing is blindly refined through electrically adjusting the weight of the massive antennas, where an array structure based simultaneous perturbation algorithm is designed. Simulation results are provided to demonstrate the superiority of the proposed method over the existing ones.