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：实现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，现代通信卫星星座力求通过更激进的空分频率复用模式，在地面单位面积上获得足够高的比特率吞吐量。这一目标要求卫星搭载窄波束天线，但其尺寸往往与宿主卫星的体积/质量及承载约束不相兼容。本文研究了一种大型分布式天线阵列的可实现性能——该阵列由多个（从数个到数十个）更简单、更小尺寸的子天线组成，每个子天线由一颗（小型）卫星搭载。这些子天线本身可进一步采用（常规的）二维辐射单元阵列实现，从而构成一种被称为“星群阵列”（Formation of Arrays, FoA）的整体分布式天线架构。实现该辐射架构的卫星需保持相对紧密的间距，构成编队飞行体，并作为整体进行协同控制。本文建立了FoA天线的理论分析框架，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——该网络依托低轨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。