FPD'17

D3P3 - ARTES C&G - Q/V-Band feed system development - Airbus Defence and Space Ltd (UK)

16 Feb 2017, 10:05

50m

Newton 1 & 2 (ESA/ESTEC)

Speaker

Mr Richard Roberts (Airbus Defence and Space Ltd)

Description

The purpose of this activity has been to develop a Q/V-band feed system (EM), suited to gateway applications in GEO telecoms satellites VHTS systems. The initial phase of the program comprised of a design trade-off study where alternative feed architectures were evaluated and critical components for 2 main alternative architectures were then selected for breadboard design, manufacture and test. As a result of the bread-boarding phase, a single feed architecture was selected for the full EM product development(6-port Q/V-band feed system). The core polarisation network operates in both LHCP & RHCP over the full Q/V-band allocated to FSS. The EM feed has met the return loss, isolation & axial ratio performance requirements and demonstrates an excellent agreement with predicted performance. Additionally, the mechanical design of the EM feed successfully met a target minimum feed spacing of 26mm in order to be suitable for more cost efficient antenna geometries using smaller reflectors. The modular design consists of a wideband polariser and OMT for the core polarisation network. This is augmented with a project specific horn and triplexers for the full feed system (EM).

Short Speaker Information

After gaining an MSc in Microwave Solid State Physics in 1987 at Portsmouth Polytechnic in the UK, Richard Roberts has worked as a microwave antennas and feeds engineer in the space and defence industries covering frequencies from L to W-band. Since 1995 he has gained much experience designing and testing feed products for telecoms and military satellites as well as Satcom antennas at what is now called Airbus Defence and Space Ltd. in Stevenage, UK. He is the lead technical authority on the ARTES 5.2 development of the “QV Feed System EM”.