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StatusOngoing
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Status date2009-09-25
The objective of the project is to develop a temperature compensation technique for both high power output multiplexers and manifolds at Ka-band.
Key issues are:
- Suitability of the conceived Novell compensation techniques for the selected applications,
- Mechanical and thermal design of the temperature compensated multiplexer,
- RF/mechanical/thermal performance, size and mass advantages over conventional methods.
With the anticipated growth of Ka band satellite communications systems, there is an increasing number of narrow band channel multiplexers with output power reaching 200W in each channel. These factors limit the use of the standard invar technique and dielectric materials in Ka-band OMUXs for temperature stable performance.
COM DEV is currently supplying state-of-the-art high performance Ka band output multiplexers to the satellite payload providers. Extending the temperature compensation techniques at Ka band would give COM DEV a new product for this anticipated expanded market at Ka band to satisfy the new demand and give us an advantage over our competitors.
Several Novell techniques and methods have been proposed from the onset of the project. The proposed techniques and method have several key features in common.
- High Q factor,
- High power handling capability at Ka band,
- Applicable to large number of channel manifold coupled multiplexer,
- Extremely stable RF performance over temperature.
The proposed development work is separated into two phases.
The first phase covers the survey and trade-off study of temperature compensating high performance filter/multiplexer techniques. Down selection will be undertaken for the design and breadboard development of the respective temperature compensation techniques for the filter and manifold.
The second phase covers the development of EM multiplexer incorporating both successfully developed techniques for the channel filters and manifold in the design, build and validation test.
The first phase of the project is complete. The breadboard filter and manifold demonstrates significant improvement in RF performance stability over temperature.
The phase 2 Engineering Model development will incorporate both developed techniques for the filter and manifold and undergo simulated flight operation tests to validate the developed Novell technology.