High Accuracy Antenna Pointing System

Advanced Technology

Status

Ongoing
Status date

2014-11-21

Objectives

The objectives are:

To analyse antenna pointing errors budget and investigate the techniques and technologies required to increase pointing accuracy for broadband multiple high gain pencil beams.
To identify the methodology and the hardware/software required for the antenna pointing determination and correction for single and multiple feed per beam concepts.
To consolidate an achievable antenna pointing error budget required for future Multimedia Mission.
To produce the associated technology development plan and cost at final Review.

Challenges

The study will allow identifying, architecture and critical technologies required to fulfil the future demand in High Accuracy antenna system pointing to cope within highly demanding multimedia mission.

Features

In order to conduct this study, it is necessary to perform the following set of activities:

Survey of the state of the art and a consolidation of the requirements.
Trade-off analysis shall be performed for the 2 multiple beams antenna configurations:
Single Feed per Beam (SFB) and Array Fed Reflector (AFR).
Four preliminary architectures, ie one baseline and one backup solution per antenna configuration, shall be defined and a preliminary sub-system design shall be performed.
Development and validation of a simulator tool,
Determination of performance of the four Antenna pointing system (APS) architectures.
Identification of the critical technologies and creation of a technology roadmap defining follow-on activities and providing associated ROM costs.

Plan

The project shall be carried out with the following milestones:

System requirement Review December 2010
Concept selection revie May 2011
Preliminary Design Review September 2011
Mid Term Review December 2011
Simulator Capability review April 2012
Final Review November 2012
Final Review of CCN July 2014

Current status

Final review with ESA on the 15^th of November 2012. CCN for extra activities ending July 2014.

PROJECT DEVELOPMENT:

In order to conduct this study, it is necessary to perform the following set of activities :

The starting point shall be a survey of the state of the art and a consolidation of the requirements.
After this, a trade-off analysis shall be performed for the 2 multiple beams antenna configurations: Single Feed per Beam (SFB) and Array Fed Reflector (AFR).
- Four preliminary architectures, ie one baseline and one backup solution per antenna configuration, shall be defined and a preliminary sub-system design shall be performed.
After development and validation of a simulator tool,
The performance of the four Antenna pointing system (APS) architectures shall be determined.
Then we will identify the critical technologies and generate a technology roadmap defining follow-on activities and provides associated ROM costs.

RESULTS:

Through the evaluation of the proposed APS architecture, the HA-APS study has shown that improved pointing performances can be reached thanks to the implementation of combinations of elementary HW and/or SW evolutions.

According to the identified evolutions and future mission needs, a technology roadmap has been set-up to propose ways forward.