Low cost briefcase satphone terminal antennas

Two low cost L-band briefcase satphone terminal antennas, a two-element lin ear array of probe-fed netallic discs and a 2 x 2-element sequential feed p lanar array of aperture-coupled microstrip patches are investigated. The tw o antennas were tested indoors in an anchoic chamber and outdoors while con nected to an NEC S1 transcieving terminal. A comparative study shows that t he 2x2-element array is a superior choice having 14 dBi gain, less than 1.6 dB axial ratio over the global mobile satellite communications frequency b and of 1.525 to 1.661 GHz and high quality voice communications via Optus B series satellites.