FIELD OF THE INVENTION

Embodiments of the present invention relate to the field of wireless communication; more particularly, the embodiments of the present invention relate to generating multiple beams simultaneously with a single satellite antenna to facilitate handing off communication between two satellites.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

A satellite terminal attempting to stay in communication with a constellation of nonstationary satellites can only point to a given satellite while that satellite is within the terminal's field of view. When the satellite leaves the field of view, the terminal must point to a different satellite that has recently entered the field of view. With only a single beam to point to any given satellite at any one time, the RF connection will be lost during the transition to a different satellite. That is, the satellite will have to break its connection with the satellite leaving its field of view so that it can make a connection with a new satellite that is entering or already in its field of view. This break-before-make connection results in a data outage, caused by time for the antenna to switch pointing angles, time for the tracking algorithms to optimize the pointing on the new satellite, time for the modem to lock to the new carrier, and time for the network to re-establish end-to-end connection.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

A beam splitting hand off systems architecture and method for using the same are disclosed. In one embodiment, the method comprises: generating a first beam with a single electronically steered flat-panel antenna to track a first satellite; generating a second beam with the single electronically steered flat-panel antenna to track a second satellite simultaneously while generating the first beam to track the first satellite; and handing off traffic from the first satellite to the second satellite.

