A multi-track integrated satellite communication phased array system based on a four-channel and four-beam T / R chip

Abstract

The present invention discloses a multi-track integrated satellite communication phased array system based on a four-channel and four-beam T / R chip. The system is assembled into the entire phased array through multiple sub-array units. The sub-array unit includes: a T / R component chip, a beam control module, and a power supply module. The power supply module supplies power to the T / R component chip and the beam control module in a distributed power supply form. The beam control module communicates with an external area control unit (ACU) to complete the beam characteristic control and circuit management control of the array surface. The T / R component chip receives, synthesizes, and feeds and transmits spatial radio frequency signals, and performs dual-beam tracking and fast switching for low-earth orbit satellites. The present invention solves the problems of the large volume and weight of the existing satellite communication phased array antenna, the high complexity of the system, the inability to achieve simultaneous pointing and coverage of high and low orbits, and the short beam switching period requirement.

Description

Technical Field

[0001] The present invention relates to the technical field of antennas, and particularly to a multi-orbit integrated satellite communication phased array system based on a four-channel four-beam T / R chip. Background Art

[0002] With the development of satellite mobile communication technology, the requirements for miniaturization, high gain, light weight, and low profile of communication terminal antennas are becoming increasingly urgent. In occasions such as national defense, emergency disaster relief, communication in remote areas, and on-site command of emergencies, real-time communication between mobile carriers and satellites has become one of the important requirements for both military and civilian use. Phased array antennas have a powerful electronic beamforming function, which can realize communication with geostationary satellites while meeting the requirements of quickly switching satellite beams for low-earth-orbit satellite Internet. Flexible working modes, lower profiles, and inertial-free beam scanning all make phased array antennas the mainstream in current communication terminal antennas. However, large-scale and multi-channel phased arrays will be extremely large in volume and weight, and the system complexity will also be very high, making it impossible to achieve the miniaturized design of satellite communication terminals. Summary of the Invention

[0003] Therefore, the present invention provides a multi-orbit integrated satellite communication phased array system based on a four-channel four-beam T / R chip to solve the problems of large volume and weight of existing satellite communication phased array antennas, high system complexity, inability to achieve simultaneous pointing and coverage of high and low orbits, and short beam switching period requirements.

[0004] To achieve the above object, the present invention provides the following technical solutions:

[0005] The present invention discloses a multi-orbit integrated satellite communication phased array system based on a four-channel four-beam T / R chip. The system is assembled into the entire phased array through multiple sub-array units. The sub-array unit includes: a T / R component chip, a beam control module, and a power supply module. The power supply module supplies power to the T / R component chip and the beam control module in a distributed power supply form. The beam control module communicates with an external area control unit (ACU) to complete the beam characteristic control and circuit management control of the array surface. The T / R component chip performs the reception synthesis and feed transmission of spatial radio frequency signals, and performs dual-beam tracking and rapid switching for low-earth-orbit satellites.

[0006] Further, the T / R component chip includes: a T chip and an R chip. The T chip completes the channel allocation and power amplification of signals, and the R chip completes the low-noise amplification and power synthesis of signals.

[0007] Further, the T / R component chip is an SOC chip integrated with four-channel RF input and four distributed beam controllers, and is provided with an SPI control bus to implement amplitude-phase control of the beam in standard protocol frames, and complete the fast fixed pointing of four beams according to the parameter information given by the beam control module.

[0008] Further, the T / R chip is a four-channel four-beam microwave receiver. The RF signal is fed into the receiving chip through 4 channels. After passing through cascaded low-noise amplifiers, at the end of each channel, a power divider will divide the signal into 4 paths, and each path contains a vector modulator to perform amplitude and phase control on each path according to the beam pointing information.

[0009] Further, the spatial RF signal is fed into the four-channel four-beam R chip through a microstrip antenna. The R chip performs low-noise amplification, phase shift and amplitude modulation and then transmits it to the sub-array power synthesis network.

[0010] Further, the R chip outputs 4 beam signals according to the input 4-way RF signals. Each beam combines RF signals with amplitude and phase control respectively. After the sub-array synthesis network completes power synthesis, it is output to the secondary sub-array synthesis network through the common port respectively.

[0011] Further, the secondary sub-array synthesis network receives the 4-beam RF signals output by the sub-array power synthesis network, performs secondary power synthesis with the sub-array output RF signals of the corresponding beams and then outputs them respectively.

[0012] Further, the external area control unit ACU calculates the azimuth and elevation angles of the phased array terminal relative to the satellite according to the positioning and timing module and the attitude sensor, and combines the satellite constellation orbit data.

[0013] Further, the external area control unit ACU sends the azimuth and elevation angle parameters to each sub-array unit through the CAN bus. The sub-array unit combines its own array element coordinates to complete the beam pointing configuration of each beam of each channel of each R chip.

[0014] Further, the dual-beam tracking and fast switching process is as follows:

[0015] Power-on initialization: According to its own position and ephemeris calculation, following the longest visible time criterion, select the best satellite beam S1 for program tracking, and select the second-best satellite beam S2 for program tracking for synchronous search;

[0016] Tracking Optimization: When the satellite beam S1 is within the off-axis angle range of the terminal, satellite beam switching is not required. During this period, automatic tracking is performed according to the received signal field strength AGC1 provided by the baseband processing unit. Similarly, the optimal beam pointing angle of the satellite beam S2 is automatically tracked through the received signal field strength gradient AGC2 of the satellite beam S2;

[0017] Beam Switching: When the satellite beam S1 moves out of the off-axis angle range of the terminal, satellite beam switching occurs, that is, it switches to the optimal beam pointing angle corrected by automatic tracking of the current optimal satellite beam S2, without having to go through the optimization process from program tracking to automatic tracking again. At the same time, the current sub-optimal satellite beam S3 is selected for program tracking for synchronous search;

[0018] During Communication: Continuously loop "tracking optimization - beam switching" until the communication ends and the beam tracking is disconnected.

[0019] The present invention has the following advantages:

[0020] The present invention discloses a multi-orbit integrated satellite communication phased array system for a four-channel four-beam T / R chip. A high-low orbit integrated satellite communication phased array antenna is designed and implemented using a four-channel four-beam T / R component chip, with modular and standardized design, reducing the volume, weight of the terminal device antenna and the system complexity. The combination of hardware analog multi-beam independent control and software dual-beam tracking and switching algorithms enables two beams to simultaneously track a low-earth orbit, or one beam to track a high-earth orbit and one beam to track a low-earth orbit, meeting the requirement of a short satellite beam switching period for high-low orbits and enabling rapid switching. The design and implementation of the entire satellite communication phased array antenna achieve a low-cost phased array antenna design for the terminal device with small volume, light weight, large realized gain, wide scanning range, and high accuracy. Brief Description of the Drawings

[0021] In order to more clearly illustrate the embodiments of the present invention or the technical solutions in the prior art, the following will briefly introduce the drawings required for use in the description of the embodiments or the prior art. Obviously, the drawings described below are only exemplary, and for those of ordinary skill in the art, without creative efforts, other implementation drawings can also be obtained based on the provided drawings.

[0022] The structures, ratios, sizes, etc. depicted in this specification are only used to cooperate with the content disclosed in the specification for those familiar with this technology to understand and read, and are not used to limit the limited conditions for the implementation of the present invention. Therefore, they do not have technical substance. Any modification of the structure, change in the proportional relationship, or adjustment of the size, without affecting the effects that the present invention can produce and the purposes that can be achieved, should still fall within the scope that can be covered by the technical content disclosed in the present invention.

[0023] Figure 1Block diagram of the functional system composed of the phased array antenna provided by the embodiment of the present invention;

[0024] Figure 2 Block diagram of the phased array receiving channel provided by the embodiment of the present invention;

[0025] Figure 3 Internal functional block diagram of the T / R chip provided by the embodiment of the present invention;

[0026] Figure 4 Schematic diagram of the dual-beam tracking and switching principle provided by the embodiment of the present invention. Detailed implementation manners

[0027] The following specific embodiments illustrate the implementation manners of the present invention. Those skilled in the art can easily understand other advantages and effects of the present invention from the content disclosed in this specification. Obviously, the described embodiments are part of the embodiments of the present invention, rather than all of them. Based on the embodiments of the present invention, all other embodiments obtained by those of ordinary skill in the art without creative efforts fall within the protection scope of the present invention.

[0028] Embodiment

[0029] Reference Figure 1 Referring to [reference], this embodiment discloses a multi-orbit integrated satellite communication phased array system based on a four-channel and four-beam T / R chip. The system is assembled into the entire phased array through multiple sub-array units. The sub-array units include: a T / R component chip, a beam control module, and a power supply module. The power supply module supplies power to the T / R component chip and the beam control module in a distributed power supply form. The beam control module communicates with an external area control unit (ACU) to complete the beam characteristic control and circuit management control of the array surface. The T / R component chip performs the reception synthesis and feed emission of spatial radio frequency signals, and performs dual-beam tracking and fast switching for low-earth orbit satellites.

[0030] According to theoretical calculations and simulation verifications, to meet the G / T value and EIRP value when pointing and covering high and low orbits simultaneously, 2048 receiving channels and 2048 transmitting channels are selected for the entire phased array antenna. The entire phased array adopts a design method of separating sub-arrays and flexibly assembling large arrays, with a channel combination method of 16*16 for sub-array units, realizing modular and standardized design of sub-arrays. Each sub-array realizes 256-channel reception and transmission, and only 8 sub-arrays are required to complete the assembly of the entire receiving or transmitting large array, greatly reducing the system complexity.

[0031] The T / R component chip is an SOC chip integrating four-channel RF input and four distributed beam controllers, and is equipped with an SPI control bus to achieve amplitude-phase control of the beam in standard protocol frames, and complete the fast fixed pointing of four beams according to the parameter information given by the beam control module. Reference Figure 3 , the T / R chip is a four-channel four-beam microwave receiver. The RF signal is fed into the receiving chip through 4 channels. After passing through cascaded low-noise amplifiers, at the end of each channel, a power divider will divide the signal into 4 paths, and each path contains a vector modulator to perform amplitude and phase control on each path according to the beam pointing information. The entire phased array is highly integrated, and its volume fully meets the usage requirements of ground terminal equipment. The chip integrates an SPI control bus internally, and externally, the internal registers can be accessed through standard protocol frames to complete the update control and status readback of the amplitude and phase of each channel. Compared with the traditional T / R component that configures amplitude-phase parameters in parallel, this chip supports a series form, simplifies the circuit in hardware design, and reduces the complexity of the entire subarray control system. The T / R component chip includes: a T chip and an R chip. The T chip completes channel allocation and power amplification of the signal, and the R chip completes low-noise amplification and power synthesis of the signal.

[0032] Taking the receiving array as an example, 4-way RF signals are input. Inside the chip, they are divided into 16 signals through a power divider to complete the independent shaping of 4 beams. The four-beam output ports are equipped with distributed beam controllers. Such a receiving channel design enables the 4 beam directions to be controlled separately by strategies without additional increase in the number of channels.

[0033] The entire chip is externally controlled through the SPI bus. The chip input signals include clock, data, and latch signals. According to the beam pointing parameters calculated externally, the amplitude-phase parameters are transmitted to the amplitude-phase controllers of each channel in the standard protocol frame format to complete the independent control of amplitude and phase respectively.

[0034] Reference Figure 2 , specifically, the process of receiving spatial radiation signals and processing control signals is as follows: The spatial RF signal is fed into the four-channel four-beam R chip through a microstrip antenna. The R chip performs low-noise amplification, phase shift, and amplitude modulation and then transmits it to the subarray power synthesis network;

[0035] The R chip outputs 4 beam signals according to the input 4-way RF signals. Each beam combines RF signals with separately controlled phase and amplitude. After the subarray synthesis network completes power synthesis, it is output to the secondary subarray synthesis network through the common port respectively;

[0036] The secondary subarray synthesis network receives the 4-beam RF signals output by the subarray power synthesis network, performs secondary power synthesis with the subarray output RF signals of the corresponding beams, and then outputs them respectively;

[0037] The external area control unit ACU calculates the azimuth and elevation angles of the phased array terminal relative to the satellite based on the positioning and timing module and the attitude sensor, and combines the satellite constellation orbit data.

[0038] The external area control unit ACU sends the azimuth and elevation angle parameters to each sub-array unit through the CAN bus, and the sub-array unit completes the beam pointing configuration of each beam of each channel of each R chip in combination with its own array element coordinates.

[0039] To solve the problems of fast moving speed of low-earth orbit satellites and short beam switching period, the software design of the present invention adopts a dual-beam tracking and switching algorithm, and the schematic diagram of the algorithm principle is as Figure 4 shown. The process of dual-beam tracking and switching is as follows:

[0040] Power-on initialization: According to the calculation of its own position and ephemeris, and in accordance with the longest visible time criterion, the best satellite beam S1 is selected for program tracking, and the second-best satellite beam S2 is selected for program tracking for synchronous search.

[0041] Tracking optimization: When the satellite beam S1 is within the off-axis angle range of the terminal, there is no need to perform satellite beam switching. During this period, automatic tracking is performed according to the received signal field strength AGC1 provided by the baseband processing unit. Similarly, the best beam pointing angle of the satellite beam S2 is automatically tracked through the received signal field strength gradient AGC2 of the satellite beam S2.

[0042] Beam switching: When the satellite beam S1 moves out of the off-axis angle range of the terminal, satellite beam switching occurs, that is, it switches to the best beam pointing angle corrected by automatic tracking of the current best satellite beam S2, without having to go through the optimization process from program tracking to automatic tracking again. At the same time, the current second-best satellite beam S3 is selected for program tracking for synchronous search.

[0043] During communication: Continuously loop "tracking optimization - beam switching" until the communication ends and the beam tracking is disconnected.

[0044] While the simulated multi-beam mode can achieve simultaneous pointing and coverage of high and low orbits, the problems of fast moving speed of low-earth orbit satellites and short beam switching period are also solved.

[0045] A multi-track integrated satellite communication phased array system for a four-channel four-beam T / R chip disclosed in this embodiment uses a four-channel four-beam T / R component chip to design and implement a high- and low-orbit integrated satellite communication phased array antenna. With modular and standardized design, it reduces the volume, weight of the terminal device antenna and the system complexity. The combination of hardware analog multi-beam independent control and software dual-beam tracking and switching algorithms meets the requirement of the short beam switching period of low-orbit satellites for fast switching. The design and implementation of the entire satellite communication phased array antenna achieve a low-cost phased array antenna design for terminal devices with small volume, light weight, large realized gain, wide scanning range, and high precision.

[0046] Although the present invention has been described in detail with general descriptions and specific embodiments above, based on the present invention, some modifications or improvements can be made, which are obvious to those skilled in the art. Therefore, these modifications or improvements made without departing from the spirit of the present invention all fall within the scope of protection required by the present invention.

Claims

1. A multi-track integrated satellite communication phased array system based on a four-channel and four-beam T / R chip, characterized in that, The system is assembled into the entire phased array through multiple sub-array units. The sub-array units include: T / R component chips, beam control modules, and power supply modules. The power supply module supplies power to the T / R component chips and beam control modules in a distributed power supply form. The beam control module communicates with the external area control unit (ACU) to complete the beam characteristic control and circuit management control of the array surface. The T / R component chips receive, synthesize, and feed and transmit spatial radio frequency signals, and perform dual-beam tracking and fast switching for low-earth orbit satellites. The T / R component chip is an SOC chip integrated with four-channel radio frequency inputs and four distributed beam controllers, and is provided with an SPI control bus to achieve amplitude-phase control of the beam in a standard protocol frame, and complete the fast fixed pointing of the four beams according to the parameter information given by the beam control module. The T / R component chip is a four-channel four-beam microwave receiver. The radio frequency signal is fed into the receiving chip through 4 channels. After passing through cascaded low-noise amplifiers, at the end of each channel, a power divider divides the signal into 4 paths, and each path contains a vector modulator to control the amplitude and phase of each path according to the beam pointing information.

2. The multi-track integrated satellite communication phased array system based on a four-channel and four-beam T / R chip according to claim 1, wherein The T / R component chip includes: a T chip and an R chip. The T chip completes channel allocation and power amplification of the signal, and the R chip completes low-noise amplification and power synthesis of the signal.

3. The multi-track integrated satellite communication phased array system based on a four-channel four-beam T / R chip according to claim 1, wherein, The spatial radio frequency signal is fed into the four-channel four-beam R chip through a microstrip antenna, and the R chip performs low-noise amplification, phase shift, and amplitude modulation and then transmits it to the sub-array power synthesis network.

4. A multi-track integrated satellite communication phased array system based on a four-channel four-beam T / R chip as claimed in claim 3, wherein The R chip outputs 4 beam signals according to the input 4-channel RF signals. Each beam integrates RF signals with separately controlled phase and amplitude. After the sub-array synthesis network completes power synthesis, it is output to the secondary sub-array synthesis network through the common port respectively.

5. The multi-track integrated satellite communication phased array system based on a four-channel four-beam T / R chip as claimed in claim 4, wherein The secondary sub-array synthesis network receives the 4-beam RF signals output by the sub-array power synthesis network, and performs secondary power synthesis with the sub-array output RF signals of the corresponding beams and then outputs them respectively.

6. The multi-track integrated satellite communication phased array system based on a four-channel four-beam T / R chip according to claim 1, characterized in that, The external area control unit (ACU) calculates the azimuth angle and elevation angle of the phased array terminal relative to the satellite according to the positioning and timing module and the attitude sensor, and combines the satellite constellation orbit data.

7. The multi-track integrated satellite communication phased array system based on a four-channel four-beam T / R chip as claimed in claim 6, wherein The external area control unit (ACU) sends the azimuth angle and elevation angle parameters to each sub-array unit through the CAN bus, and the sub-array unit combines its own array element coordinates to complete the beam pointing configuration of each beam of each channel of each R chip.

8. The multi-track integrated satellite communication phased array system based on a four-channel four-beam T / R chip as claimed in claim 1, wherein, The process of dual-beam tracking and fast switching is as follows: Power-on initialization: According to its own position and ephemeris calculation, following the longest visible time criterion, select the best satellite beam S1 for program tracking, and select the second-best satellite beam S2 for program tracking for synchronous search. Tracking optimization: When the satellite beam S1 is within the off-axis angle range of the terminal, there is no need to switch the satellite beam. During this period, automatic tracking is performed according to the received signal field strength AGC1 provided by the baseband processing unit. Similarly, the best beam pointing angle of the satellite beam S2 is automatically tracked through the received signal field strength gradient AGC2 of the satellite beam S2. Beam switching: When the satellite beam S1 moves out of the off-axis angle range of the terminal, satellite beam switching occurs, that is, it switches to the currently best satellite beam S2, the best beam pointing angle after automatic tracking correction, without having to go through the optimization process from program tracking to automatic tracking again. At the same time, the currently second-best satellite beam S3 is selected for program tracking for synchronous search; During communication: Continuously loop "tracking optimization - beam switching" until the communication ends and the beam tracking is disconnected.

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