High Power L-band T/R Module for Spaceborne SAR
Conference: EUSAR 2006 - 6th European Conference on Synthetic Aperture Radar
05/16/2006 - 05/18/2006 at Dresden, Germany
Proceedings: EUSAR 2006
Pages: 4Language: englishTyp: PDF
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Authors:
Knight, Andrew; Head, Alan (EADS Astrium Ltd, United Kingdom)
Graaf, Marcel van der (TNO Defence, Security and Safety, Netherlands)
Ludwig, Michael; Vogel, Pierre; Gallou, Nicolas Le (ESTEC - European Space Agency, Netherlands)
Abstract:
Within the framework of the pre-development for a TerraSAR-L space-borne mission a high power Transmit/Receive module was required to meet stringent requirements. The module is to be capable of delivering more than 40 watts of output power, in pulsed transmit mode, while having a Noise Figure of 2.8 dB in receive mode and be capable of beam steering. The two channel receive architecture of the T/R module is required for full polarimetric operation of the instrument. This programme required the production of 35 T/R modules, 14 were utilised in the two PDM antenna tiles representing part of the 20 tile flight antenna and 21 underwent a 2000 hour test. As part of this programme a new MMIC chip set was developed to fulfil the low power RF requirements.