Steerable L-band antennas for land mobile terminals

European Space Agency is developing EMS (European Mobile System) land mobile system for voice and data communications. Two different antenna concepts have been realised for a mobile terminal The first one is a rotating antenna consisting of two radiating elements. The second one is an electronic array antenna in which 12 radiating elements locate on the facets of a truncated pyramid. Several field trials have been performed in order to optimise the tracking software and to evaluate the behaviour of the antenna in different environmental conditions. The results show that the developed antenna is feasible from the cost and performance point of view for this application. >