Description
Objective: The objective of the activity is to design, implement and test a scaled engineering model with critical functions of a multi-beam receive antenna for satellite-based air traffic surveillance in the frequency range 950 - 1100 MHz, taking into account narrow beamwidth, directivity and mechanical constraints. Targeted Improvements:- Two-fold increase, compared to the state of the art, in the number of beams covering the visible Earth (to at least 30).- Increased beamwidth and non-uniform/flexible beam size whilst maintaining a gain of 20 dBi and respecting mechanical constraints.Description: The importance of satellites enabling global flight tracking and air traffic surveillance services is well recognised. Over-the-air aircraft signal detection results collected fromseveral space assets indicate challenges. There is a need to enhance the satellite-based Secondary Surveillance Radar (SSR) messagereception, in particular the capability of detecting aircraft in highly congested airspaces when there is a high level of interfering signals arriving at the satellite.This activity aims to design, manufacture and test an on-board multi-beam antenna for reception of SSR signals and other relevant aircraft messages transmitted in the 950 - 1100 MHz range, taking into account the stringent requirements for in-band interference mitigation, grating lobe control, antenna gain and flexible multi-beam operation. Mechanical constraints on the antenna dimensions, weight and accommodation will be taken into account in the system trade-offs, antenna architecture development and design. The antenna architecture will support narrow beamwidths at large scan angles.