Description
The objective of the activity is to design, manufacture and test a set of highly efficient (minimum 25% power added efficiency) Q-band Monolithic Microwave Integrated Circuits (MMIC) for active antenna applications in GEO, MEO and LEO. The packaged devices will be based on European technology covering the 10 Watt power class (GEO) down to a few 100mWs for LEO applications. Targeted Improvements: Enabling critical building block technology development for Q-band active antennas in GEO, MEO and LEO. Description: The Q/V-band is starting to be adopted for the feeder link in very high throughput satellites (VHTS) in a geostationary orbit. Current systemsrely on fixed feeder links which are driven by travelling wave tubes, however the use of active antennas for the feederlink, thoughmore complex in implementation, brings several advantages such as multiple beam gateway access with one on-board antenna aperture, graceful degradation of performance in case of active component failures and competitive RF efficiency. RF combining losses typical of reflector-based solutions, are reduced, while the individual power amplifiers can be sized for the best efficiency. Q/V band is also anticipated to be employed for user-links of non-geostationary orbit satcom systems where the congestions of the Ku and Ka bandsmay drive future systems too higher frequency bands. In this case, the larger power consumption due to the requirement to generate smaller user beams, reinforces the need for high efficiency power amplifier building blocks in the power range from 10W down to a few 100mW. Processes are becoming available to achieve the needed power efficiency and this activity will develop a set of highly efficient Q-band power amplifier MMIC for telecom applications covering GEO, MEO and LEO, based on European technology.