KAL | ESA CSC

Status

Completed
Status date

2017-11-07
Activity Code

5C.245

Objectives

The objective of the Ka band LNA EQM program is to be fully prepared for flight production of units. In order to achieve this we have to present to our customers fully qualified units. In the program we included two different EQMs which cover all different product variants needed by customers. In the programme we included design and development of all support hardware and software for a full flight production. Our aim is to be a competitive and fully prepared supplier already in the first production project.

Challenges

The baseline for the LNA MMIC and is the in-house developed LNA MMIC in the mHEMT D01MH process. The risk with the D01MH is that it is a relative new process, the process stability and the ESA qualification.
Functional blocks i.e. temperature and gain setting and the DC/DC converter: small size and low mass requirements involving new technologies.
Mechanical design for the Ka-band LNA unit is challenging due to small size and low mass requirements.
The development and qualification features flexible stacking of up to 4 multiple LNA channels in the same unit without need of requalification. The risk for re-qualification is considered average.

Benefits

The program has kept RUAG Space competitive both in Europe and US in the Telecom Payload product area.

Features

With this development separate Ka Band LNA units for both primary as well as secondary power are qualified and included in the RUAG Space product family for telecom payloads. Another main feature of the development and qualification is to allow flexible stacking of up to 4 multiple LNA channels in the same unit without need of re-qualification.

Key parameters: