Description
The objective of this activity to design, manufacture and test a Ku- or Ka-band faceted reconfigurable reflect array operating in receive band for reconfigurable coverage applications. RF and thermo-elastic performance shall be experimentally evaluated.TargetedImprovements: - Reduction up to 20% the reflector aperture diameter in comparison to today's shape reflector technology.- Improvement of the directivity performance at the edge of the coverage by up to 25%.Description: High-gain antennas based on parabolic reflectors have been used for a very long time to provide shaped-beam and multi-beam coverage for a wide range of applications. This flexibility, however, has been achieved at the expense of complicating the feed cluster and associated beam forming network. In addition, the need to manufacture a mould to craft the reflector increases the development schedule significantly. On the other hand, reflect-array-based antennas can provide an additional degree of freedom in the design due to the reconfigurable nature of the reflecting surface. This degree of freedom can provide a number of advantages:- to reduce the complexity of the cluster or- to provide beam re-shaping/steering capability without increasing feed cluster complexity or- to avoid the increase of the reflector dimensions when beam steering is required or- to provide interference-limiting capability by creating nulls in the radiation pattern towards the jammer directions.The re-configurability of the reflect-array surface could be achieved by means of low-voltage, low-current devices such as Field-Effect-Transistor-based (FET) phase shifters and the reflect-array could be implemented with flat panels to simplify the control over the reconfigurable elements. This implementation could be used to alleviate the reflectarray bandwidth limitation, when compared to a conventional parabolic reflector, and it could also simplify the stowage of the antenna during launch.This activity will develop a breadboard model of a reconfigurable-coverage faceted reflect-array, operating in Ku or Ka-band in receive mode, with low-power phase-shifting devices to achieve the surface re-configurability. At least, two connected facets will be developed and will be RF and thermo-mechanically tested.