Description
Although telecommunication satellites are designed to have long life time to maximize operators´ revenue, they also need to have some in-orbit flexibility to react to short-term market changes. This development addressed the need for polarization flexibility (converting from Circular to Linear polarization) at feed assembly level, which could be necessary to comply with regional regulations when changing the service area and orbit position of a given GEO satellite. The purpose of this activity was to achieve such a functionality without duplication of hardware (feed assemblies) and minimizing the number of actuated parts to maintain high reliability.
This activity started with a consolidation of the mission needs to identify possible missions/frequency bands benefiting the most from polarization flexibility. Requirements at feed level were derived from the selected mission and combined with a state-of-the-art review to select the most promising feed assembly concept. A representative Engineering Model was then developed and tested, with polarization flexibility both in Tx and Rx. RF measurement results were in line with expectations, demonstrating the potential of the proposed solution.
