Scattering from a Low-Orbiting Satellite with Rotating Solar Array

The radiation patterns of satellite antennas may be highly influenced by scattering in the satellite, its payload and its solar array. By ray tracing techniques (GO/GTD) and applying orbit predicting data it is shown how it is possible to model the link signal to a given earth station taking into account that the solar array follows the direction to the sun and thus is rotating relative to the body of the satellite.

Predictions for the ENVISAT satellite are presented and compared to measured link signals.

Publication: 28th ESA Antenna Workshop on Space Antenna Systems and Technologies Digest
Place: ESTEC, Noordwijk, The Netherlands, 31 May-03 June 2005