Description
Thales Alenia Space – Italia (TAS-I), in the frame of “Large Antennas for P-Band SAR- Critical Breadboarding” study, has successfully conducted RF, thermo-mechanical and technological validation of P-band Feed Array (FA) breadboard for Biomass mission.
The FA breadboard is made of flight proven technology, based on a structural panel (sandwich CRFP-AL) supporting on one face the radiating elements (4 patches) and on the other face the Beam Forming Network (BFN) in microstrip. The BFN is designed to compensate the cross-polar intrinsic contribution of main optics based on short F/D (~0.65). The selected BFN scheme avoids using of large hybrids and extra-HW (e.g. loads) still providing the needed cross-cancellation at secondary level. The FA design is modular and allows customization to cope with final optics geometry and mission required beams by tuning few FA parameters (e.g. inter-element spacing, coupling level for cross-cancellation). Furthermore the FA can withstand the required input power (140W) at P-band frequency with adequate margin provided by test (> +6 dB) selecting proper BFN thickness. The P-band Feed Array critical breadboarding study has evidenced that the feed array flight technology is suitable for the BIOMASS mission and that the TRL 6 is achieved.
