Overview on the development and applications of antenna control systems

During last three decades, the antenna control systems have been extensively developed, studied and applied in several satellite communication systems. While tracking the signal source, these systems play an important role in the alignment of antenna coordinates at receiving end. It is always needed to receive strongest, best quality and environmental effect free signal, transmitted by the transmitter. The speed, accuracy, power, cost and size are the important parameters of antenna control system. The number of control systems implement standard algorithms PI, PD, PID, PIDA, fuzzy, self-tuned fuzzy, LQG, H∞, genetic, neural network and their combinations. Many researchers developed manual, differential, monopulse, electronic, auto-tracking, left-right, conical and step tracking methods to track signal source. In this paper the developments and applications of the antenna control systems are reviewed. The system performances of the implemented standard algorithms and tracking methods in antenna control system are discussed. The simulated and experimental results show that the advancements in algorithms have reduced major issues and increased performance of the systems. The performance is also improved with the combinations of tracking methods and/or algorithms.