Ku Band High Power Feed Chain

Competitiveness & Growth

Status

Ongoing
Status date

2011-11-23

Objectives

The goal of the project was the development and qualification of an innovative high-power Ku-band feed chain at EQM level.

The main foci for the development are:

Significantly higher multipacting threshold,

Combined Tx/Rx operation with reduced PIM risk,

Improved thermal performance,

Increase of the operational frequency band width,

Excellent RF performance.

The feed chain shall keep the modular interface philosophy to allow for individual adaptation to specific customer requirements.

Challenges

Generic Design covering future requirements,

Highly reproducible,

Integrated manufacturing technology (minimising the number of RF interfaces, based on a monolithic manufacturing process for OMT),

Increased multipaction and PIM performance,

Excellent RF performance.

Benefits

Qualified design of a high performance feed chain with extreme high cross-polar discrimination, low return loss and high port-to-port isolation over an increased frequency range for high RF power applications.

Features

The EQM feed chain consists of a corrugated horn, a transition from circular to square waveguide, an Ortho-mode Transducer (OMT), feed brackets and a thermal radiator. The following major requirements shall be fulfilled:

Frequency: 10.7 - 14.5 GHz,

Combined Tx / Rx,

RF power: > 2 x 24 carriers à 110 W,

3rd order PIMP: < -145 dBm,

Operating temperature range: -150 ºC < T < +146 ºC.

Plan

Development and qualification of an EQM High-Power Antenna Feed System covering the full operational Ku Band (FSS) with high interface flexibility (el. & mech.) for implementation into a dedicated antenna as complete feed chain or at component level.

Current status

Project finalized with the successfully verification and qualification of the Engineering Qualification Model (EQM) of the High-Power Feed Chain.

EQM High power feed chain assembly before thermal painting