QUADEM

Status

Ongoing
Status date

2025-02-28
Activity Code

5C.497

Objectives

This project is paving the road to the future implementation of a new generation of P/Ls either GSO or NGSO for wideband communication providing the possibility of a compact implementation of a Feeder Link BFN Receiver of a Bent Pipe or Regenerative P/Ls. The MMIC resulting from this Contract will enable very compact and low power implementation of Hybrid (analogue and digital) or Fully Digital Feeder Link RX Antenna Beamforming.

Challenges

No Part Number (PN), including USA competitors, ever faced the implementation of a Quadrature Direct Demodulator in the V-band. The resulting PN will be a breakthrough technology produced with European Foundry silicon.

Benefits

Before the outcome of this contract, a very bulky, and power hungry heterodyne architecture had to be used to take a V-band (50GHz-centric) RF signal and down convert it into a analogue base band.

With this new MMIC, all of the X-band Intermediate Frequency Oscillators, Mixers, Passive Filters would be eliminated allowing a compact implementation of the Down Conversion functionality within a single MMIC that operates as a Quadrature Mixer.

The European market offerings lack a MMIC. However, the one coming out of this Advanced Research in Telecommunications (ARTES) project offers the implementation of a fully digital or hybrid V-Band Beam Forming for a Feed Link On Board receiver.

Features

The MMIC is expect to draw 0.7W featuring, not only the Quadrature down Conversion functionality, but also a Frequency Quadrupler that could be used to ease the RF Local Oscillator reference distribution in the MMIC hosting carrier module or PCB. Additionally 0.5W when the Frequency Quadrupler would be disabled entering directly with the full frequency RF LO. The size of the MMIC die is expected to be below 9 mm² (3 mm x 3 mm) to ease integration with Antenna Feeds separated by at 50GHz.

System Architecture

The satellite system architecture behind the use of this new European MMIC is the implementation of fully digital or Hybrid Beam Forming P/L, operating in the Feeder Up Link of new VHTSS systems.

Plan

The project plan is a typical 24 months ARTES development project where the Part Number will be fully designed, along with the MAIT delivery at the end. There will be spare MMIC dies and fully Tested MMIC Evaluation Boards for European customers aimed at sampling and benchmarking the Part Number in their own laboratories before engaging in a new advanced P/L design.

Current status

The contract began in April 2024. It is in its specification consolidation and early design phase.