Ka-band is still very high for the Direct RF sampling transceivers, if Amazon's claim is true then it's mighty impressive. $2.4 billion is a lot of money to sp

Ka-band is still very high for the Direct RF sampling transceivers, if Amazon's claim is true then it's mighty impressive. $2.4 billion is a lot of money to spent on antenna design and development, and if they don't have separate modem that explains the astronomical cost due to down/up conversion and perhaps most of the beam steering signal processing are done inside the antenna systems. If the Starlink antenna has any patent applications, it will be very interesting to see their architecture. I think Direct RF sampling transceivers can make for much cheaper Starlink at least in the Ku-band antenna if their price are becoming cheaper themselves. Based on this thesis (2021) that proposed a lower cost antenna systems for mobile terminals, Starlink has separate TX-Rx architecture that make their antenna system rather expensive [1]. "The limited operational bandwidth of the radiating elements integrated in their low-profile alternatives (i.e. slotted waveguide antenna arrays) actually obliges to split transmission (Tx) and reception (Rx) in two different panels, keeping a relatively high cost for the end-users." There's a Reddit discussion on the ST developed antenna systems from 3 years ago [2]. There's also a teardown video of the Starlink antenna systems by Kenneth Keiter [3]. [1] Innovative 3-D printed Ku- and Ka- band antenna solutions targeting cost effective satellite on the move and 5G phased arrays https://theses.hal.science/tel-03135252/ https://theses.hal.science/tel-03135252/ [2] First look at Starlink phased array antenna PCB: https://www.reddit.com/r/rfelectronics/comments/k14vl0/first_look_at_starlink_phased_array_antenna_pcb/ https://www.reddit.com/r/rfelectronics/comments/k14vl0/first... [3] Starlink Teardown: DISHY DESTROYED! https://youtu.be/iOmdQnIlnRo?si=QUSs346cgfsJzDOi https://youtu.be/iOmdQnIlnRo?si=QUSs346cgfsJzDOi