Photo: Mitsubishi Electric.

Mitsubishi Electric announced its development of the Rotational Element Electronically Scanned Array (REESA) antenna, which achieves high-precision beam scanning by electronically rotating antenna elements individually. According to the company, the REESA antenna is suitable for airport radar systems, mobile satellite communication systems, and possible new applications such as microwave-based industrial heating and mounting on drones for long-distance data transmission. Commercialization of the product is targeted at 2020.

The antenna controls phase by using motors to rotate circularly polarized antenna elements individually, and realizes high-precision beam scanning by controlling phase in approximately two-degree increments.

According to Mitsubishi Electric, airport radars and mobile satcom systems conventionally use mechanically driven parabola antennas or Active Electronically Steered Antennas (AESAs), which scan antenna beams with RF modules. The size and weight of the drive mechanism can be a problem in the case of parabolic antennas, while AESAs require expensive RF modules for each antenna element and achieve only limited accuracy in phasing required for high-precision beam scanning.