In Situ Antenna Pointing Angle Calibration for Q-Band Satellite Ground Station

Exploration of millimeter-wave (mmWave) bands has gained a significant interest in satellite communications. mmWave satellite communication link quality is highly sensitive to the pointing angle of the antenna in the ground station, due to its high directivity. For the multiantenna ground station design, it is also of importance to know pointing angles and angle difference of all antenna elements. However, it is challenging in the real-world setup. In this letter, we propose a novel calibration technique to estimate the electrical antenna pointing angle of the in situ ground station based on the received signal power pattern on the ground station, which is time-variant according to the satellite in-orbital motion. The proposed algorithm is numerically simulated and experimentally validated, demonstrating its effectiveness for the in situ antenna pointing angle calibration.