Acquiring and tracking a satellite signal with a scanned antenna

An apparatus comprising:

• an inertial measurement unit (IMU) configured to perturb a value of one or more of roll, pitch and yaw angles of an antenna orientation to create one or more variant orientations for which beam direction and polarization are calculated to create beams with the aperture to implement a first search pattern to search for a satellite during acquisition;
• a computation unit coupled to the IMU and configured to compute new scan and polarization angles, in response to perturbed roll, pitch and yaw angles, for each of the variant orientations;
• an electronically steered antenna coupled to the computation unit and responsive to the new scan and polarization angles, the antenna configured to receive an radio-frequency (RF) signal from a satellite for each of the variant orientations;
• a modem coupled to the steerable antenna and the IMU and configured to generate one or more receiver metrics representing a received RF signal associated with each of the variant orientations, wherein the IMU is configured to select, as a new orientation, one of the variant orientations based on the one or more receiver metrics, the new orientation to be used to create a new set of variant orientations, by perturbing a value of one or more of roll, pitch and yaw angles of an antenna orientation, for which beam direction and polarization are calculated to create beams to implement a second search pattern that is narrower than the first search pattern to search for the satellite during acquisition,
• wherein the IMU is configured to repeatedly generate sets of variant orientations until an observed satellite signal that meets predefined criteria is received by the antenna.