PAGE CONTENTS
Objectives
With a trend to have payloads with large number of Ka transponders or multi-spot architecture satellites, to provide a compact solution for Ka- Band reception equipment not only has huge advantages but is sometimes the only suitable solution.
Mass, footprint, power consumption and cost-effective solutions are mandatory in a market that claims for an improvement with regards to the stand-alone traditional approach.
Compared to its equivalent stand-alone, modular DoCon/Receiver and LNA means a cost reduction of up to 20%, with figures for power consumption, mass and footprint reaching improvements of up to 40%. Modularity is a must to give answer to as many different configurations as possible too.
Compact Ka goal is to provide this modular and flexible full solution with low noise amplification in the operational uplink frequency band and down- conversion to the downlink frequency band of a variable number of channels at a certain frequency translation plan each.
The goal is challenging and includes taking these new developments to a full qualification process to mitigate risks for a potential future contract, not only for the afore mentioned equipment, but including CPSU and MLO solutions.
Challenges
Keeping sate of the art performances while providing such flexibility in main electrical parameters of the developed equipment has suppose a huge challenge that has allow us to develop more accurate engineering tools and models, has force us to improve internal manufacturing and testing skills and capabilities, and has lead us to implement, improve and consolidate the full MHIC manufacturing processes including qualification activities.
System Architecture
Developed hardware is intended to be as flexible and configurable as possible. It consists on different slices that can be placed together in a variable number of units depending on application needs, to fit different redundancy schemes, or to fill different number of antenna elements. All slices are biased from the same CPSU, that can command the different gain commandable settings, switch on and off the loads and receive the different status signals. Receivers and/or down-converters received as well LO signal from MLO slices that can be configured as N&R and can be stacked as well following the same design approach.
Full solution pretends to be a response covering as much scenarios as possible for the Ka-type payloads.
Plan
This development is divided in the following phases:
- Phase 1 (Ko to PDR) → The objective of this phase is to establish internal and external interfaces, perform all necessary analyses and propose a design for the PDR review.
- Phase 2 (PDR to CDR) →The main objective of this phase is to demonstrate by Analysis and with the EM results that the proposed design is compliant with the program requirements, and it is sufficiently mature to proceed with the manufacturing of EQMs.
- Phase 3 (CDR to FR) → The purpose of this phase is to manufacture and test the EQM models. A FR is held at the end of phase in order to review the results of the qualification test campaign and to assess the work carried out during the project.
Current Status
The outcome of the Compact Ka development for the full family of products (CPSU, LNA Ka, RCV & DNC Ka-Ka and LO) is as follows:
- All EQM models manufactured and fully qualified (LNA Ka, DCN Ka-Ka, LO).
- QCI for the hybrids are successfully completed (LNA Ka, RX Ka- Ka).
Several possible improvements have been identified for future activities, as:
- Enclosure reinforcement to increase the rejection for improving EMC performance (minor variations from the EQM model).
- LNA temperature variation can be reduced using compensation schemas already tested on other programs (minor variations from the EQM model).
- MLO vibration response to be improved by using appropriated reference, internal TCXO or external OCXO (minor variations from the EQM model).
Companies
