Speaker
Mr
Paul Booth
(Airbus Defence and Space Ltd (UK))
Description
The programme was to develop a feed mounted Ka-band quadruplexer. This component will be developed for multi frequency antennas and will employ a combination of non-standard Tx and Rx bands. The filters were realised in a mixture of circular waveguide for the narrow band filters, traditional rectangular for wideband filters and a dual mode rectangular filter. Far-out-of-band rejection was provided where possible by integrating various techniques obviating the need for lowpass or ‘cover’ filters.
The quadruplexer development focussed on the four bands detailed below:
Tx1: 20.2GHz to 21.2 GHz
Tx2: 25.5GHz to 27.0 GHz
Rx1: 27.83GHz to 28.44 GHz
Rx2: 30.0GHz to 31.0GHz
With an operating band of over 10GHz the manifold design was critical and techniques were used to shift manifold generated resonances into unused bands.
A key advantage that the design offers to the payload is the use of a single fed as opposed to a dual fed antenna or even a single antenna rather than two antennas. If the quadruplexer was part of the standard payload then there would be a very long run of waveguide operating at the extremes of its frequency range which has a significant impact on loss and over-moding. A dual fed reflector has mass implications and is usually a non-optimum solution.
Primary author
Mr
Paul Booth
(Airbus Defence and Space Ltd (UK))
Co-authors
Mr
Dave Kilroy
(Airbus Defence and Space Ltd (UK))
Mr
Mark Harvey
(Airbus Defence and Space Ltd (UK))
Mr
Mark Kunes
(Airbus Defence and Space Ltd (UK))
Mr
Trevor Baker
(Airbus Defence and Space Ltd (UK))
