I. Chong (Ed.): ICOIN 2002, LNCS 2344, pp. 359–371, 2002. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2002 Modelling and Simulation of Phased Array Antenna for LEO Satellite Tracking Ng Chee Kyun 1 , Ashraf Gasim Elsid Abdalla 2 , Nor Kamariah Noordin 1 , Sabira Khatun 1 , Borhanuddin Mohd Ali 1 , and Ratna Kalos Zakiah Sahbuddin 1 1 Department of Computer and Communication Systems Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Universiti Putra Malaysia, UPM, 43400 Serdang, Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia. mpnck@yahoo.com, {nknordin, sabira, borhan, ratna}@eng.upm.edu.my http://cc.eng.upm.edu.my 2 Faculty of Engineering, Multimedia University (Cyberjaya Campus), Jalan Multimedia, 63100 Cyberjaya, Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia. asraf.abdalla@mmu.edu.my http://foe.mmu.edu.my Abstract. Nowadays achievements on mobile satellite systems (MSS) commu- nication give a great concern for research in global wireless communication fields. The developments of several Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite systems have promised worldwide connectivity with low delay real-time voice commu- nications. Since the LEO satellite systems revolving around the Earth overlay mobile terminals (MT) or Earth stations over several minutes only, a sophisti- cated LEO satellite tracking must be introduced. Phased array antenna is seen to be the most promising solution. Although phased array antenna has been widely use for mobile cellular communication systems with advantages of its electroni- cally beam steering, it is still not truly used in integrate with LEO MSS. In this paper, the mathematical model of phased array antenna is introduced for LEO satellite tracking purpose. Furthermore, the simulation of beam forming using phased array antenna is explored to obtain multiple and also steerable beams for tracking the satellite smoothly. Finally, a integration of phased array antenna in MT is proposed for future global wireless communication systems. 1 Introduction An antenna is a structure for radiating or receiving electromagnetic (EM) waves that carry information. Antennas can be classified into different types. The most common one is the wire antenna used in radio, television and cellular telephones, and the re- flector and horn antenna that can be found in direct broadcast satellite termi- nals. Nowadays, the phased array antenna technology has been developed to meet the emerging communications need. It remains the most promising type of sharply direc