Coherent power combining on spacecraft via wavefront Multiplexing techniques

A novel orthogonal wavefront (WF) Multiplexing (Muxing) and De-Multiplexing (Demuxing) scheme is proposed for uplink from antenna array elements to multiple spacecraft (S/C). By using an adaptive equalization at the receiver of S/C, the phase deviation due to different near field distances of the uplink from antenna array elements to S/C is compensated via the WF Demuxing method on S/C. This scheme allows power combining from antenna array elements to S/C. Besides, this scheme can be extended and applied to multiple S/C. Simulations verify that the proposed scheme achieves the same bit error rate (BER) performance as the theoretical BER in additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channels and one path flat fading channel. Furthermore, although the radiated signals among the multiple radiating antenna array elements are non-coherent, the coherent power combining of the radiations of multiple radiating antenna array elements is accomplished on the S/C receiver in the proposed techniques.