Digital Beamforming Payload Patents: Who Leads, Where the Gaps Are 2026
Digital Beamforming and Payload Processor Patents: Who Holds the Ground
Concentrated at the top. Five assignees hold 65.6% of the 285 records in scope, and the leader alone accounts for 98 — this is a field with an entrenched core, not an open field. Filings ran from 55 in 2017 down to 7 by 2024 (-59% from the 2021 figure of 17), with 2025 and 2026 figures still incomplete due to publication lag.
- 1VIASAT INC98
- 2LANTERIS SPACE LLC28
- 3KRATOS INTEGRAL HOLDINGS LLC28
- 4ASTRANIS SPACE TECHNOLOGIES CORP19
- 5THE BOEING CO14
See the full digital beamforming and payload processors analysis in Eureka
- The complete ranking, not just the top five
- Every IPC branch with its share of the corpus
- The most-cited records, and where claim space is still thin
Common questions about this landscape
Who holds the most patents in digital beamforming and payload processing?
One assignee leads with 98 of the 285 records in scope, well ahead of the fifth-place holder at 14 and tenth place at 8. The top five combined hold 65.6% of all records, and the top ten hold 82.8%, so the field is concentrated rather than fragmented. Any competitive or freedom-to-operate analysis in this space should start by reviewing that leading portfolio in detail rather than treating the field as evenly distributed.
Is filing activity in this field growing or shrinking?
Filing peaked in 2017 at 55 records and has declined since, with complete-year data showing a drop from 17 records in 2021 to 7 in 2024, a -59% change. That said, publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, so the 2025 and 2026 figures in any dataset will understate true activity and should not be read as a further decline yet. The honest read is a maturing claim landscape following a strong early-2020s filing wave, not a field going cold.
What patent classes dominate digital beamforming and payload processor filings?
H04B, the general transmission subclass, appears on 80.4% of the 285 records in scope, making it the dominant classification by a wide margin. H01Q antennas follow at 27.4%, with H04J multiplex communication, H03H impedance networks and filters, and H04L digital information transmission each sitting near 9%. Because records often carry multiple IPC codes, these shares add up to more than 100% and should be read as overlapping claim coverage, not mutually exclusive categories.
Disclaimer. This analysis is based on Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent records and is provided for general information and reference only. Patent data carries inherent limitations — recent filings are under-counted because of publication lag, counts may be on a record or family basis, classification and applicant-name data may contain errors or duplicates, and the underlying search query defines the scope shown — so the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing here is an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Verify independently and review with qualified patent and legal professionals before acting on it.
Method: Filing trend and technology composition. Derived from a Patsnap search on Digital Beamforming and Payload Processors covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish. Every share divides by all records in scope. Data: Patsnap Eureka. See the full landscape report.