Description
Objective: Objective of the activity is to design and develop surface mountable filters that can be integrated into the RF module of frequency converter equipment.
Targeted Improvements: Highly integrated Ku- and Ka-band converters with up to 20% mass and footprint saving with respect to the state of the art,
Description: The size of the RF module of a frequency converter is mainly limited by the footprint of the various filters that are needed to remove all of the unwanted signals. Today's technology can meet the stringent requirements in terms of rejection. However, filters at L to C-band are often too large to be integrated into the RF module. The size of these filters is also an inhibitor to implementing in orbit flexibility, since switchable filter banks become too large and bulky to be practicable.
Recently developed circuit techniques promise to overcome these limitations. The design of high in-band performance filters based on low performance resonators is now possible at the expense of higher insertion losses. A dramatic footprint reduction can be achieved by combining this design technique with three dimensional implementation techniques such as Low Temperature Cofired Ceramics (LTCC) or multilayer Printed Circuit Boards (PCB).
This activity aims at assessing such compact filters at L, S or C-band, where conventional planar implementation is quite large. Filter engineering models in L-band to C-band shall be designed, developed, manufactured and experimentally verified.
Tender Specifics