Description
The objective is to develop and test a Ku or Ka band transparent phased array antenna to provide broadband connectivity on board cars. Targeted Improvements: Develop a new class of phased array antennas for cars able to guarantee a seamless broadband connectivitywith LEO satellites. Description: There is today a significant interest to provide broadband connectivity to cars. This request is associated to the need to guarantee emergency services (such as police, firefighters, paramedics), environmental protections, healthcare (telemedicine), urban services, entertainment and autonomous driving. Next generation cars will be designed with large panoramic, transparent roofs. Therefore, broadband connectivity can be only enabled by developing large transparent antennas in Ka-band integrated in the car glasses (windows, panoramic roof, windshield, etc...). Connections with Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites, as compared with connection with GEO satellites, offer a significant advantage in terms of link budget but poses additional challenges in terms of antenna pointing Objective:The objective of the activity is to design, build and test reconfigurable Radio Frequency Integrated Circuit (RFIC) filters, and demonstrate their benefits on a C-Band antenna array demonstrator for 5G.Targeted Improvements:Enabling a variety of terrestrial/satcom 5G use-cases currently not feasible at C-Band.Description:Phased array antennas provide an efficient way to steer and direct the radiated RF energy in terrestrial 5G applications such as base stations and fixed wireless access (FWA) terminals. However, the performance and benefits of the phased array can be limited by trade-offs within the constituent RF chains, particularly when considering interference from terrestrial and satellite networks co-existing at C-Band. The ability to reconfigure the bandwidth of a RF chain to control the effects of emissions and interference is therefore a desirable capability in future mid-band 5G services. As an example of the advantages of the proposed concept, a wideband and dynamically programmable array operating over C-Band (e.g., 3.3 to 7.0 GHz), could achieve a combination of passband system noise figure and rejection of out-of-band interference by optimising the filter's transfer function for various operating and interference conditions. Such a flexible arrayarchitecture would in fact enable a variety of 5G use-cases currently limited by interference (e.g., Connected Car, Aeronautical and 5G FWA terrestrial/satellite dual-connectivity). It could also support use-cases requiring high 5G data rates on both uplinks and downlinks simultaneously from a single node. This activity aims at developing a new class of reconfigurable filters, suitable for integration in intermediate RF stages, where very compact size is required but relatively high losses are acceptable. A review of RFIC-based filter technologies and techniques shall be carried out, including silicon, PIN diode, MEMS as well as switchable filter banks. The activity will trade off, design, and manufacture the required RFICs to cover a variety of C-Band application scenarios requiring hybrid terrestrial/satellite connectivity. A small 16x16 C-Band array demonstrator, representative of the identified C-Band scenarios, shall be designed, manufactured, and tested to validate the benefits of the new RFICs (COTS could be used for other RF/Antenna components). Key performance such as linearity, tuning time, tuning range, power consumption and size of the specific RFICs shall be analysed at both device and system levels. To assist the antenna designer in optimising the benefit of these degrees of freedom, a software tool comprising an accurate behavioural filter model shall also be developed.Procurement Policy: C(1) = Activity restricted to non-prime contractors (incl. SMEs). For additional information please go to:http://www.esa.int/About_Us/Business_with_ESA/Small_and_Medium_Sized_En….