ESA Open Invitation To Tender AO8275
Open Date: 27/05/2015
Closing Date: 08/07/2015

Status: ISSUED
Reference Nr.: 15.1ET.03
Prog. Ref.: TRP
Budget Ref.: E/0901-01 – TRP
Special Prov.: BE+DK+FR+DE+IT+NL+ES+SE+CH+GB+IE+AT+NO+FI+PT+GR+LU+CZ+RO+PL
Tender Type: C
Price Range: 200-500 KEURO
Establishment: ESTEC
Directorate: Directorate of Technical & Quality Manag
Department: Electrical Engineering Department
Division: RF Payload Systems Division
Contract Officer: Karl, Heinz-Uwe
Last Update Date: 27/05/2015
Update Reason: Tender issue

Bandwidth, frequency and power reconfigurable payload architectures are currently under development by major satellite manufacturers. Today’s fixed bandwidth filters are a major bottle neck in such systems and have led to the implementation of reconfigurable filters. These new reconfiguration scenarios require flexible converters and, hence, flexible filters to be accommodated after the down/up conversion. A conventional approach is to include a switchable filter bank which, for advance reconfigurable payloads, implies anincrease in the number of filters with the corresponding size increase. This activity aims to study new reconfiguration concepts inorder to provide bandwidth flexibility to the IF filter. A second goal is to reduce the size whilst the insertion loss variation, group delay variation and rejection remain in line with the standard solution. Due to the position of these IF filters inside the payload diagram, an increase of absolute insertion losses can be tolerated. Pre-distortion and lossy filter theories have been supported in previous ESA activities. These techniques enable the use of lower Q-factor materials and/or reduce the size of the component. Therefore, new bandwidth reconfiguration techniques able to cope with methods to achieve the required compactness shall be designed, developed and tested. Solutions based on filter-banks shall not be considered in the frame of this activity. In this study, a filterswitchable for at least 3 bandwidths will be designed, manufactured and tested. Procurement Policy: C(1) = Activity restricted to non-prime contractors (incl. SMEs). For additional information please go to EMITS news “Industrial Policy measures for non-primes, SMEs and R&D entities in ESA programmes”.

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