Basic Parameters of Antennas for Aircraft Satellites and Missiles,

System requirements for airborne, satellite and missile antennas continue to place increasingly severe demands upon antenna technology. In general these requirements push toward the increased capability to control and modify antenna patterns, and away from the use of small antennas with broad radiation patterns. Increased control can imply several levels of added sophistication. At the lowest level it implies mechanical or electronic scanning of an antenna directive pattern, at the next level there are needs to produce precise low sidelobe radiation patterns, and at the highest level of complexity there is the need to actively suppress jammer interference through the use of adaptive control of a full array or an antenna with sidelobe cancellers. in addition to increased control, there is also a trend toward toward higher frequencies, even to EHF frequencies where arrays of several thousand elements are necessary for some applications. At present it appears that the technology at millimeter wave frequencies will be radically different that the current state-of-the-art. System needs at these frequencies are thus seen as major stimulus to technology.