Description
The objective of the activity is to develop, manufacture and test a complex, thermally stable, high power broadcast feedand its support structure with a reduced number of manufactured parts, and ideally as a single piece.
Targeted Improvements:20% mass reduction compared to equivalent state of the art RF feeds, with fewer parts and reduced complexity in terms of design, assembly and integration.
Description:Antenna feeds, in most cases, consist of several functional elements (filters, orthomode transducers, polarisers, etc.), which are designed and assembled from multiple mechanical parts due to their complexity. In addition to the RF constraints,there are also mechanical and thermal requirements that need to be incorporated into the design, for example, mounting brackets andradiators. These constraints add more complexity and further increase the number of parts in the design.
This activity will investigate new approaches for the design of complex RF feeds for broadcasting missions. Such new design approaches shall benefitfrom the large degree of freedom provided by advanced manufacturing techniques such as additive manufacturing. The design shall allow the manufacturing of a complex feed including its support structure as a single part. An engineering model of the integrated antenna feed shall be manufactured and tested. The design and analyses shall address all RF, mechanical, stability and thermal aspects. The scalability of the solution for application in multiple beam systems shall be analysed.
Tender Specifics