IMPRESSIVE: Amazon’s answer to SpaceX Starlink delivers 400Mbps in prototype phase.

To reduce production costs, Amazon said it must “decrease the size, weight, and complexity” of the antenna. But this is difficult with Ka-band equipment, which needs “more physical separation between transmit and receive antennas to cover its wide frequency range,” Amazon said. “For this reason, legacy Ka-band antennas place the transmit antenna and receive antenna next to one another, requiring a larger surface area and increasing production costs.”

Amazon said its solution is to use “tiny antenna element structures to overlay one over the other. This has never been accomplished in the Ka-band… Our design uses a combination of digital and analog components to electronically steer Ka-band beams toward satellites passing overhead.” This method let Amazon create a “single aperture phased array antenna that measures 12 inches in diameter, making it three times smaller and proportionately lighter than legacy antenna designs,” the company said.

That’s some nifty engineering.