Description
On Delegation Request Activity
The objective of this activity is to develop, manufacture and test a scaled engineering model of an active gateway antenna with site diversity management, as needed for Terabit Satellites in geostationary orbit. Critical functions, such as beam formingas well as fast beam switching to achieve site diversity and the required radio frequency (RF) technologies, including MMICs to realise analogue beam forming, shall be developed and evaluated.
Targeted Improvements: Enabling V-band active antenna technology development not existing today.
Description:
Future Very High Throughput Satellite (VHTS) communication systems rely on Q- and V-band feeder links (return and forward link respectively). It is well known that a large number of gateways is needed for such systems due tothe high atmospheric fading effects at these frequencies. However, it has been shown that the number of required V-band gateways can be significantly reduced when a Smart Gateway Diversity Concept (SGC) is applied for the forward link to counteract the atmospheric fading effects at V-band.
Such concepts have the potential to reduce the number of required gateways by half. In this activity, anactive feederlink antenna concept with an integrated SGC will be developed. The on-board antenna shall support at least 15 simultaneous beams with a steering capability of the full earth field-of-view from geostationary orbit.
A scaled engineering model of a V-Band active feederlink antenna shall be designed, manufactured and tested. The scaled engineering model shall support 4 simultaneous beams, as well as site diversity management as needed for Terabit Satellites in geostationary orbit. Critical functions, such as beamforming, fast beam switching to achieve site diversity and radio frequency (RF) technologies, including Microwave Monolithic Integrated Circuits (MMICs) to realise analogue beam forming, shall be developed and evaluated. The scaled antenna engineering model will achieve at least 50 dBi peak boresight gain.
footnote: On Delegation Request (formerly called Priority 2) activities will only be initiated on the explicit request of at least one National Delegation.