Earth-coverage Beam

An Earth-coverage beam is the radiation pattern produced by an Earth-coverage antenna on a geostationary satellite, designed to illuminate a large fraction of the visible Earth. Such beams have a half-power beamwidth of approximately 17.3°, corresponding to coverage of about 40% of the Earth’s surface as seen from geostationary orbit. Earth-coverage beams trade spatial reuse and EIRP density for wide-area coverage, in contrast to zonal and spot beams. They are typically realised using shaped reflectors or feed-array illumination of a single large reflector.