A satellite talking to ordinary phones has two jobs with opposite requirements: tell every phone in view that it exists, and deliver real data to specific phones. US11863250B2, granted to Lynk Global on January 2, 2024, splits those jobs across two beams, claiming navigation signals on a "wide beam" and data on a "directive beam."
The CPC reflects the dual nature: H04B 7/0408 and 7/043 (multi-antenna / diversity transmission), with H01Q 1/288 (satellite antennas), H01Q 5/28, 21/065, and 25/002 (multi-band and multi-beam array arrangements). A spread of beam-and-array codes for a claim that is fundamentally about using two beam types at once.
The mechanism is matching beam shape to task. A wide beam blankets a large area with low power density — perfect for a broadcast navigation or acquisition signal that everyone needs to hear but that carries little data. A directive (narrow) beam concentrates power onto a small region, delivering the link budget that actual data throughput requires. By assigning the broadcast function to the wide beam and the payload data to the directive beam, the satellite spends its limited power where each function needs it.
Spectrum plus geometry, cleanly partitioned: broad geometry for presence, tight geometry for throughput. Lynk pioneered the direct-to-cell concept (see its foundational US10523313B2), and this grant shows the company refining the beam architecture that makes the service practical.
The caveat: wide-beam-plus-narrow-beam designs are an established antenna pattern, so this protects Lynk's specific navigation-and-data application of it, not the idea broadly. But it is a tidy illustration of how direct-to-cell forces designers to think about beams functionally — and of how an early mover keeps filing to defend the niche it created.