Speaker
Description
The main objective of this project (performed by Airbus Defence and Space Spain) is to perform an exhaustive trade-off for multi-functional antennas, mainly focused on the combination of NAVANT L-band and Search and Rescue antennas (RX UHF antenna and TX L-band antennas), which are the biggest antennas in the GALILEO satellites antenna farm. The trade-off covers a broad range of possibilities ranging from planar patch antenna technologies to reflector antennas, helixes and PEC (patch excited cup) technologies. The work has been performed under ESA contract AO/1-8404/15/NL/MH (“Multifunctional antennas for future navigation payloads”).
Second generation GALILEO (G2G) missions will embark several additional payloads and antennas apart from the main navigation antenna. Actual IOV/FOC satellites have the following antennas and payloads in the Earth deck panel: Search and Rescue UHF/L-Band antennas, C-band mission antenna and Laser Retro Reflector. For future G2G satellites additional antennas and payloads are also considered such as SBAS antennas, inter satellite links antennas and other navigation antennas. Embarking all these various functions on the same platform is generating issues of accommodation so new antenna architectures and configurations aimed at maximizing the use of real state (combining antennas on the same physical aperture) will be required while keeping required performance in terms of power handling (multipaction, corona and PIM), antenna gain and EIRP, signal quality (phase centre, phase pattern linearity, stability in temperature and in coverage), EIRP and isolation between the different antennas. Antenna architectures will have to limit possible interference between payloads and take antenna coupling into careful consideration for performance optimisation.
| ESA Technical Officer | Luca Salghetti-Drioli |
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