ARTES-5.1 – ESA Telecom Technology Workplan ... - Emits - ESA

Annex 2Page 37Ref. Activity Title Procurement Policy Budget(KEUR)5B.071(09.153.12)Objective:Description:Planned TenderIssueKa-band integrated active feed for multiple beams antenna Open Competitive Tender Type: C 600 3Q 2009 12To manufacture and test an EM of a Ka-band integrated active feed chain including a radiating element with an OMT or polarizer, a filter, a redundancy switch and LNA’s.Estimated Duration(months)Multiple beam receive antennas operating at Ka-band require a very large number of long waveguide runs from the feed clusters to the Low Noise Amplifiers (LNA) located in the platform.The use of waveguide is imposed by the Noise Figure requirements but induces very large constraints on satellite accommodation and mass budgets. The use of active feeds (feeds includingredundant LNA) is considered of high interest to reduce the overall complexity and possibly operate at lower temperature achieving better Gain and Noise Figure performance. It is expectedthat making use of the same technology for the different feed elements (OMT or polarizer, filter and LNA) and investigating spin-off from developments at millimetre wave (science, earthobservation, etc.) would allow identifying more integrated and less complex feed assembly.Integrated feed for Ka band missions have already been developed as part of ESA contracts. However these developments were made for multi-beam per feed concept (e.g. Focal Array FedReflector) with 1λ to 1.2λ feed spacing resulting in specific selection of technologies for the implementation of the feed elements technologies.Single feed concept or multi feed per beam concept with long focal length are now considered for multi-beam antenna. These concepts offer a larger spacing between elements (~3 to 5λ) thusmaking possible the integration of functionalities in the feed element which have not been considered in the previous ESA studies (e.g. the input filter, the low loss redundancy switch) butalso the use of new technologies which have the possibility to improve the performance and will allow further integration level. For example, for the implementation of the OMT or polarizer,filter and redundant LNA a single technology making use of suspended stripline on organic substrate, micromachining techniques or metallised plastic could be considered.The aim of the activity is to investigate the feed architectures and technologies that are able to integrate several elements of the same feed chain at once rather than having each componentmanufactured separately. This activity will look at integrating a radiated element, an OMT or polarizer, a filter, a redundancy switch and associated LNA’s all together in the feed system. Thedevelopment shall take into account large scale production and future integration in feed cluster. This development should investigate the applicability to both single feed per beam andmultiple feed per beam concepts. To ensure state of the art performance, for the LNA metamorphic technology could be considered but the LNA MMIC will be an off-the-shelf item bought infor the activity and MMIC development is not part of this activity. Promising technologies for the selected applications will be traded-off and one feed chain Engineering Model will bedesigned, manufactured and tested.