Space Technologies and Applications in Electromagnetics, Antennas and Propagation

Description

Space systems are moving from a small number of highly customized platforms toward proliferated constellations, distributed spacecraft, direct-to-device services, high-capacity inter-satellite links, responsive Earth observation, and sustained lunar and planetary exploration. At the same time, non-terrestrial networks are becoming an integral part of 5G-Advanced and are evolving toward converged space-terrestrial 6G systems. These developments create design problems that cannot be solved within a single discipline.

Modern space systems must be designed as complete systems rather than as separate antenna, RF, processing and communication subsystems. Antennas and RF payloads, signal processing, propagation, packaging and thermal design all interact, while spacecraft must meet tight limits on mass, volume, power, pointing, reliability, spectrum use and cost.

A central theme of this issue is the joint design of satellite and user-terminal antennas, flexible RF payloads, and the signal processing used for communication or sensing. Relevant topics include beamforming and precoding, interference management, beam hopping, user grouping, waveform and synchronization design, and coordinated multi-satellite processing. These studies should use realistic antenna, RF-hardware, propagation and implementation constraints and show how the combined design affects practical outcomes such as coverage, capacity, sensing performance or mission effectiveness.

Earth-observation and scientific missions add equally demanding requirements. Synthetic-aperture radar, radiometry, scatterometry, altimetry, atmospheric sounding, navigation and planetary sensing require large or deployable apertures, high polarization purity, wide bandwidth, beam agility, calibration stability, low-noise reception, onboard processing, and high-rate data delivery. Lunar and planetary systems must additionally contend with terrain-dependent propagation, extreme temperatures, dust, intermittent visibility, long delays, and limited infrastructure.

This Selected Topic Issue invites the highest-quality original research articles and authoritative review, tutorial and perspective papers that advance space technologies through genuinely cross-disciplinary contributions. JSTEAP is co-sponsored by IEEE AP-S, MTT-S and ComSoc and is uniquely positioned to publish work spanning electromagnetics and antennas, propagation, microwave technology, signal processing, communications and sensing.

Suggested topics for submissions include but are not limited to:

1. Spaceborne, terminal and deployable antenna systems
   • Large deployable reflectors, mesh, membrane, inflatable, origami and other high-stowage-efficiency apertures; structural-electromagnetic-thermal co-design, shape control and in-orbit reconfiguration.
   • Active, passive and hybrid phased arrays; multibeam antennas; beam hopping; true-time-delay networks; wide-angle scanning; shared-aperture and full-duplex antenna concepts.
   • Small-satellite, CubeSat, conformal and platform-integrated antennas; direct-to-device, user-terminal and communications-on-the-move antennas.
   • Reflectarrays, transmitarrays, lenses, leaky-wave antennas, metasurface antennas, metamaterials and reconfigurable intelligent surfaces for space links and sensing.
   • Multiband, broadband and multi-polarized apertures; feeds, corporate networks, mutual-coupling control, calibration and array health monitoring.
   • Advanced materials, additive and micromachined fabrication, and in-space manufacturing or assembly of antenna systems.
2. RF, microwave, millimeter-wave and sub-THz payload technologies
   • Co-design of antennas with transmit/receive modules, RF front ends, filters, duplexers, multiplexers, frequency-generation chains, low-noise receivers and high-speed mixed-signal interfaces.
   • Antenna-in-package, antenna-in-module and distributed-aperture integration using waveguide, substrate-integrated waveguide, micromachined, multilayer and heterogeneous technologies.
   • Distributed power amplification and combining, linearization, adaptive bias or supply control when demonstrated as part of an integrated space payload or aperture.
   • Transmit-receive isolation, passive intermodulation, multipactor, electromagnetic compatibility and interference within densely integrated spacecraft.
   • Packaging, interconnects, thermal management, radiation tolerance, reliability and operation in extreme environments.
   • Self-healing, cognitive and health-aware RF/microwave subsystems, including embedded calibration and fault-tolerant reconfiguration.
3. Satellite communications (SatCom), flexible payloads and antenna-aware signal processing
   • NR-NTN and IoT-NTN, direct-to-device access, transparent, regenerative and software-defined payloads, inter-satellite links, multi-orbit systems and coordinated constellations, with explicit coupling to antenna, RF and propagation constraints.
   • Joint design of multibeam antenna patterns, feed and payload architectures, digital beamforming and precoding for unicast, multicast and broadcast services, including realistic per-feed, per-amplifier and feeder-link constraints.
   • Beam hopping, dynamic coverage, user grouping, scheduling and resource allocation when jointly optimized with aperture capabilities, flexible-payload limitations, gateway architecture and time-varying space channels.
   • Antenna-aware interference mitigation, receiver array processing, multigateway coordination, distributed MIMO, formation-flying apertures and cooperative multi-satellite transmission or reception.
   • Robust physical-layer processing under imperfect channel-state information, polarization mismatch, nonlinear RF payloads, phase noise, Doppler, synchronization errors and implementation uncertainty.
   • Waveforms, coding, carrier aggregation, synchronization and link adaptation co-designed with antennas, propagation, RF front ends and onboard processing for high-capacity or resilient space links.
   • Physical-layer security, anti-jam techniques, spectrum coexistence, integrated communication and sensing, and AI-assisted operation where the electromagnetic aperture and payload architecture materially shape the method and conclusions.
4. Earth observation, radar, navigation and spaceborne sensing
   • Synthetic-aperture radar, radiometry, scatterometry, altimetry, atmospheric sounding, GNSS reflectometry, planetary radar and subsurface sensing.
   • Antenna-waveform-processing co-design for wide-swath/high-resolution imaging, multimode operation, multistatic sensing, distributed radar and MIMO SAR.
   • Digital beamforming, adaptive calibration, phase and timing stability, ambiguity and sidelobe control, polarization purity and hardware-error compensation.
   • In-orbit real-time perception, cognition, decision-making and execution for autonomous or semi-autonomous space systems, including closed-loop sensing, resource allocation, tasking and reconfiguration, where onboard sensing, communications, antenna/RF resources and implementation constraints are jointly considered.
   • Integrated sensing and communications for spacecraft proximity operations, rendezvous, landing, debris detection, space-domain awareness and lunar mobility.
   • End-to-end validation of sensing payloads using measured hardware characteristics, representative data and mission-relevant performance metrics.
5. Propagation, spectrum coexistence, EMC and verification for space systems
   • Atmospheric, ionospheric and plasma propagation; rain, cloud, gaseous attenuation, scintillation, depolarization and channel dynamics from UHF through sub-THz bands.
   • Lunar and planetary-surface propagation, terrain shadowing, multipath, regolith and dust effects, and deep-space or interplanetary link models.
   • Spectrum sharing and coexistence among constellations, terrestrial systems and passive scientific services; radio-frequency-interference prediction, mitigation and protection.
   • Electromagnetic compatibility, passive intermodulation, multipactor, charging, radiation-induced effects and extreme-temperature impacts.
   • Computational electromagnetics, multiphysics modelling, digital twins, uncertainty quantification and robust design, together with ground/compact-range testing, over-the-air validation, hardware-in-the-loop. In-orbit testing, commissioning, calibration, diagnosis, performance monitoring, adaptive adjustment and reconfiguration of antennas, RF payloads and sensing/communication systems, including in-situ measurements and model updating.
6. Lunar, planetary, deep-space and emerging power applications
   • Lunar and planetary surface networks, direct-to-Earth and relay links, proximity communications, navigation and communications for crewed and robotic mobility.
   • Deep-space and interplanetary communications with joint antenna, RF-front-end, propagation and signal-processing design.
   • Solar-power satellites and microwave power transfer, including transmitting apertures, rectennas, retrodirective control, beam safety and end-to-end efficiency.
   • Swarms, distributed apertures and cooperative sensing or communications involving multiple spacecraft.
   • Space-based computing and data infrastructure whose high-capacity links, RF payloads and thermal/electromagnetic integration create new antenna and propagation challenges.

Please also note that papers focused primarily on radio telescopes and related instrumentation may be submitted separately to the JSTEAP Selected Topic Issue "Radio Telescopes for the New Millennium" (https://ieeeaps.org/radio-telescopes-for-the-new-millennium).

The IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Electromagnetics, Antennas and Propagation (JSTEAP) is co-sponsored by the Antennas and Propagation Society (AP-S), Microwave Theory and Technology Society (MTT-S), and the Communications Society (ComSoc). The focus of JSTEAP is on contributions that bridge the gaps between electromagnetics, communications, and microwave technology and manuscripts incorporating at least two of these aspects are particularly encouraged. All types of contributions are welcome including theory, experimental results, designs, applied engineering innovations, surveys, tutorials and reviews. Each issue of JSTEAP is devoted to a specific technical topic and thus provides to JSTEAP readers a collection of up-to-date papers on that topic. These issues are expected to be valuable to the research community and become a source of valuable references.

JSTEAP is a fully Open Access journal and is committed to supporting open and transparent research exchange and enabling authors to embrace best practices in data and code sharing. All submitted manuscripts should contain sufficient detail to allow their research contributions and results to be verified and repeated by independent researchers.

For manuscripts with AI-related content, JSTEAP follows IEEE publication policies. In this context, we identify two main categories of submissions; to uphold open and transparent research exchange, the following guidelines apply:

• Manuscripts describing new AI algorithms or substantive methodological advances: Public release of code and training/evaluation datasets is strongly encouraged. If full release is not possible, authors should provide sufficient algorithmic detail and complete training/evaluation protocols, together with access to datasets (public or controlled access), so that independent researchers can reproduce the results.
• Manuscripts applying established AI methods to specific EM/antenna design or propagation modeling problems: These should emphasize verifiable outcomes rather than novelty in the AI methodology. Authors must provide enough detail to enable reproduction of the workflow and results, even if proprietary datasets cannot be released. Acceptable alternatives include: (a) detailed data specifications (e.g., size, sources, preprocessing); (b) full training and inference pipelines (hyperparameters, architectures, loss functions, hardware, compute budget, evaluation metrics); and (c) clear baseline comparisons where feasible.
• Manuscripts with AI contributions outside these categories, or those seeking exceptions to these guidelines, will be considered as long as the principles of open and transparent research exchange—including verification and repeatability of results—are maintained.

Submission Guidelines

Prospective authors should submit their manuscripts following the IEEE JSTEAP guidelines. All submissions must be made through the online JSTEAP Author Portal on ScholarOne. Official templates are available via the IEEE Template Selector for both LaTeX and MS Word. Please click on “IEEE Template Selector” and follow the instructions to access the template you need.

Authors should submit their manuscripts according to the schedule below.

Important Dates