FPD'17

D3P2 - ARTES C&G - Modular High-Power Ku-Band Feed Chains - Airbus Defence and Space (Germany)

16 Feb 2017, 09:35

30m

Newton 1 & 2 (ESA/ESTEC)

Speaker

Dr Enrico Reiche (Airbus DS GmbH)

Description

Three innovative and modular high power Ku-band feed chains for the use on many satellite busses (like Eurostar E3000) have developed, manufactured and space qualified at Airbus Defence and Space under ESA contract (Artes 3-4). The first product is a feed chain for FSS Tx/Rx mission scenarios. The second one cover combined FSS/BSS Tx/Rx mission scenarios. Both feed chains are dual linearly polarised. The third feed chain is designed for BSS Tx/Rx mission scenarios using dual circular polarisation. All three feed products can be used for different antenna configurations, like global horn antennas, single offset side-deployable antennas and dual reflector antennas. The FSS Tx/Rx and FSS/BSS Tx/Rx feed chains can be complemented by filters (di-, tri- or quadruplexer) in order to separate the service/frequency bands. Key aspects of the development were generic and modular feed chain designs in order to cover different service applications and antenna configurations, combined Tx/Rx operations over an extended service frequency bandwidth, minimisation of cross polar resonances by the use of Eccosorb loads, minimisation of ohmic losses for less dissipation power in order to enable the use of a conventional thermal concept based on thermal radiators, improved high power handling to cover current and future expected customer needs and the use of milling for less machining tolerances, a lower surface roughness and to minimise lead time and manufacturing costs. The EQM feed chains were S-parameter and range tested. All measurement results show an excellent RF performance. A very good agreement of the measurements before and after environmental tests was achieved, giving evidence that the hardware was not damaged during the tests. The high power handling was successfully validated by multipaction tests with an input power of 6000 W per polarisation. The very good PIM performance was demonstrated with 3rd order thermal PIM tests using 2x140 W and 2x110 W for the FSS Tx/Rx and FSS/BSS Tx/Rx feed chains, respectively. For the BSS Tx/Rx feed chain 6th and 7th order thermal PIM tests were conducted. The feed chains were thermally PIM tested over a temperature range of -100°C to +140°C. The measured PIM level is mainly below the noise floor fully satisfying the specifications. In order to verify, that the feed chains can survive the mechanical stress during launch and the thermal stress in a geostationary orbit, a vibration test and a thermal cycling test were performed. The feed chains withstand the environmental tests without any damage or changes. The proposed FSS Tx/Rx and FSS/BSS Tx/Rx feed chains are already used for commercial flight programs, which approve the commercial success and application of this development activity.

Short Speaker Information

Enrico Reiche received the Dipl.-Ing. (M.S.) and Dr.-Ing. (Ph.D.) degrees in Theoretical Electrical Engineering from the University of Technology Ilmenau, Germany, in 1999 and 2008, respectively.
Since 2007 he has been with Airbus Defence and Space, Munich, Germany. He was involved as feed designer in numerous flight programs and worked as responsible engineer for flight programs like Astra 2E, 2F, 2G, 5B and SES6. His current interests are the technical project management of R&D programs as well as feed and antenna design.