Effective integration of terrestrial and non-terrestrial segments is one of the key research avenues in the design of current and future wireless communication networks. To this aim, modern communication-satellite constellations intend to attain sufficiently high throughput in terms of bit rate per unit area on the ground by rather aggressive patterns of spatial frequency reuse. This goal calls for on-board narrow-beam antennas, whose size turns out to be in many cases incompatible with the size/mass and accommodation constraints of the hosting satellite. This paper investigates the attainable performance of large distributed arrays of antennas implemented as the ensemble of a few to many simpler sub-antennas of smaller sizes, carried by one (small) satellite each. The sub-antennas can in their turn be implemented like (regular) 2D arrays of simple radiating elements, realizing an overall (distributed) antenna architecture that we call "Formation of Arrays" (FoA). The satellites that implement this radiating architecture need to be relatively close to each other and constitute a formation of flying objects, to be coordinated and controlled as a whole. In this paper, we develop a theoretical analysis of an FoA antenna, and we show how to take advantage of this new technology to improve network throughput in a multi-beam S-band mobile communication network with low-earth or geostationary orbiting satellites directly providing 5G-like communication services to hand-held user terminals.

翻译：地面段与非地面段的有效融合是当前及未来无线通信网络设计的关键研究方向之一。为此，现代通信卫星星座旨在通过激进的空间频率复用模式，实现地面单位面积比特率的高吞吐量。这一目标需要星载窄波束天线，但其尺寸在许多情况下与搭载卫星的尺寸/质量及安装限制不相容。本文研究了由多个较小尺寸的简单子天线组成的集群所构成的大型分布式天线阵列的可实现性能，每个子天线由一颗（小型）卫星搭载。这些子天线本身可实现为（常规）二维辐射单元阵列，从而构成一种被称为“编队阵列”（Formation of Arrays, FoA）的总体分布式天线架构。实现这种辐射架构的卫星需彼此相对靠近，构成编队飞行的物体集群，并进行整体协调与控制。本文对FoA天线进行了理论分析，并展示了如何利用这一新技术提升多波束S波段移动通信网络的吞吐量，该网络由低地球轨道或地球静止轨道卫星直接为手持用户终端提供类5G通信服务。