LAUSR

A new X-band retrodirective antenna based on superheterodyne mixer and phase conjugating technology is proposed for inter-satellite data transmission in this paper. The novel phase conjugating circuit, utilizing the reciprocity of the passive mixers, achieves high RF-IF and LO-IF isolations, high communication link gain, and a very compact low profile layout with all antenna elements and circuit components arranged at one common layer of a double-sided printed circuit board (PCB). Its mathematical principles of circuit design are derived, and the effect of up and down conversion loss deviation of mixers on the amplitude and phase error of the circuit, thus on the beam pointing error and the side-lobe of the antenna is discussed. A prototype of circularly polarized one dimension retrodirective antenna is fabricated, and its bistatic RCS measurement in an anechoic chamber is implemented to verify the effectiveness of the proposed antenna array. The results show that, within the scanning range from −30° to +30°, the array has good retrodirective performance. The proposed antenna would be a good choice for the inter-satellite data transmission inside a distributed satellite cluster.