Electronic tracking systems for space communications

Since the first television pictures were received from Telstar by aerial 1 at Goonhilly Down in Cornwall, commercial operation of satellite systems has dictated that the earth-space link must be maintained as consistently as possible. Any break in transmission or lowering of quality results in huge losses for the operator and as a result the performance of the antenna tracking system has received a great deal of attention. Recently a new technique, termed `electronic beam-squinting', has been developed to solve this problem both elegantly and economically. It is capable of a performance approaching that of the most expensive systems currently available for fixed earth stations and is also applicable to mobile terminals