Industry Days - Additive Manufacturing for RF/Microwave hardware

Design and Manufacturing of RF-Feed Chain Components using ALM (Airbus DS GmbH)

23 Nov 2016, 09:00

25m

NA052 -Erasmus Conference Room (ESA/ESTEC)

Speaker

Mr Michael Szymkiewicz (Airbus DS GmbH)

Description

Caused by the upcoming interest in very high throuput satellites (VHTS), the market for satellites is requesting satellite systems with high transmissions capacities and a high number of beams. To realize high data rates and an increase spectral efficiency, antenna systems with large bandwidth as well as higher power capabilities are necessary. To allow these requirements, multiple beam antennas are used. These antenna systems can re-use allocated frequency bands, so that the spectral efficiency will increase significantly. A typical multiple spot scenario consists of a single offset reflector fed by a horn cluster. Single feed per beam feed chains are used to generate one beam with ohne horn. Especially multiple feed per beam scenarios results in a high number of horns per antenna, hence new demands concerning accommodation, thermal concept, mass, costs and lead time are raised. Additive manufacturing has potential to fulfill the upcoming demands. Because of more degrees of freedom and new manufacturing boundaries, other possibilities for accommodation as well as mass and volume reduction could be investigated. Airbus DS, ASL, Fotec and AAC research analyzed the use of additive layer manufacturing of RF components and for that, detailed investigations to improve RF relevant parameters were performed and C- and Ku-band RF components as well as non RF samples were manufactured and evaluated. Previous and current results and activities will be presented and discussed.

JUSTIFICATION FOR THE CONSIDERATION

In frame of the ESA 5B.121 ADMAC (Advanced Desing and Manufacturing Techniques for Antenne Feed Chains) project, RF-design rules for additive manufacturing were developed.
These design rules were used for developing C- and Ku-band feed chains. First components were manufactured and measured and these results as well as previous findings shall be presented.