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Amazon has developed a small, low-cost customer terminal for ‘Project Kuiper’, its satellite-based internet service from low Earth orbit (LEO).
The tech giant said the phased array antenna is based on a new architecture capable of delivering high-speed, low-latency broadband, and will allow customers to connect to satellites passing overhead.
The antenna was tested in different environments for speed and performance. It passed all corresponding tests, offering speeds up to 400 Mbps (Megabits per second), and streamed 4K-quality video from a geostationary (GEO) satellite, Amazon noted in a blog post.
The antenna works on Ka-band frequency range, which requires the transmit and receive antennas to be physically separated, to cover a wide bandwidth. Amazon’s phased array antenna used “tiny antenna element structures to overlay one over the other,” reducing the size and weight for the customer terminal.
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The single aperture phased array antenna has a 12-inch diameter, which Amazon claims is three times smaller and proportionately lighter than legacy antenna designs. It also allows the company to offer the terminals to customers at more affordable cost, and at the same time makes it easier to install.
“If you want to make a difference for unserved and underserved communities, you need to deliver service at a price that makes sense for customers,” Rajeev Badyal, VP of Technology for Project Kuiper at Amazon, stated in a blog post. “It’s incredible to see such a small form factor delivering this type of speed and performance.”
Amazon’s Project Kuiper was approved by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission in July , with a constellation of 3,236 satellites in the LEO.
SpaceX’s Starlink internet service also operates in the LEO. The aerospace company has launched over 900 Starlink satellites till date, and started its “Better Than Nothing Beta” test program in October.
