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INDUSTRY AND TECHNOLOGY

Amazon unveils project Kuiper antenna design

mazon has completed initial development of
Athe user terminal for Project Kuiper, its
Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite constellation in
development. Amazon announced that its
prototype design has delivered speeds up to 400
Mbps and streamed 4K-quality video in tests
with a Geostationary (GEO) satellite. The antenna
design and manufacturing effort is led in-house.
Amazon said the single aperture phased
array antenna measures 30cm in diameter, and
the reduction in size compared to legacy
antenna designs will allow the company to
reduce production costs and give customers an
affordable terminal.
Nima Mahanfar, senior manager of
hardware and antenna development for Project
Kuiper said that the key advancement in the
antenna was combining transmit and receive
Project Kuiper antenna graphic: Amazon
phased-array antennas into one aperture by
using tiny antenna element structures to overlay
one over the other. Mahanfar said this has never antennas operating at 18 to 20 GHz and reduce the size and cost of our entire
been done before with the Ku-band because the transmit antennas operating at 28 to 30 GHz. terminal,” Mahanfar said.
frequencies are far apart. Our breakthrough came from the realisation By comparison, the phased array for
“Our design involves hundreds of that we could get to a single lattice by looking Starlink, SpaceX’s LEO constellation, is 48 cm in
antennas in each aperture, with receive at each antenna element uniquely – helping diameter. Like Amazon, SpaceX has built the
Starlink terminal in-house.
“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,” said Rajeev Badyal, VP of
Technology for Project Kuiper at Amazon. “This
simple fact inspired one of our key tenets for
Kuiper: to invent a light, compact phased array
antenna that would allow us to produce an
affordable customer terminal. It’s incredible to
see such a small form factor delivering this type
of speed and performance.”
Following regulatory approval Amazon is
required to launch and operate 50% of its
satellites no later than 30 July 2026, and Kuiper
must launch and operate the remaining
satellites no later than July 2029. Service will
begin once the first 578 satellites are launched.
Amazon invested $10 billion into the project at
the time of FCC approval. n

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