ESA Open Invitation to Tender AO9434
Open Date: 04/07/2018
Closing Date: 01/10/2018 13:00:00

Status: ISSUED
Reference Nr.: 18.1ET.07
Prog. Ref.: Technology Developme
Budget Ref.: E/0901-01 – Technology Developme
Special Prov.: BE+DK+FR+DE+IT+NL+ES+SE+CH+GB+IE+AT+NO+FI+PT+GR+LU+CZ+RO+PL+EE+HU
Tender Type: C
Price Range: 200-500 KEURO
Products: Satellites & Probes / RF / Microwave Communication (Platform and Payloads) / Transmitters / X-band, S-Band, Ka band, ¿ / Near Earth application, Deep space application, … / Platform vs Payload
Techology Domains: RF Systems, Payloads and Technologies / RF Technologies and Equipment / RF Equipment
Establishment: ESTEC
Directorate: Directorate of Tech, Eng. & Quality
Department: Electrical Engineering Department
Division: Radio Frequency Systems & Payloads Offic
Contract Officer: Karl, Heinz-Uwe
Industrial Policy Measure: C1 – Activities in open competition limited to the non-Larg…
Last Update Date: 04/07/2018
Update Reason: Tender issue

The Ka-band frequency enables the development of compact high resolution interferometric instruments and provides the opportunity of embarking the payload on a single platform. The 500MHz of available bandwidth allows high spatial resolution despites the high power amplification stage provides a limited bandwidth. This limitation leads to architectures that shall rely on high-speed switches.A need for high power, high speed switches has been identified for future high resolution interferometric instruments at Ka-band forEO missions where the switches will be subjected to peak powers of up to 4kW and CW powers of up to 200W. Due to the required architecture to cope with the high power requirement and wide bandwidth, the multiplexing ofthe bandwidth is required.The high speed, high reliability and high power requirements can be only meet by ferrite switches.The design challenges are exacerbated at Ka-band frequencies and above, where the increasingly small physical size of the devices, together with a limited selection of suitable ferrite materials, introduce additional problems with linearity, multipaction and thermal dissipation.All these key issues require a radically different approach for the design of those power switches.The new design approach shall consider at the same time thermal issues and microwave performances since they are inherently connected for the very high power applications where ferrite materials areapplied.The activity shall be organised as follows:- analysis of all suitable ferrite materials considering operational frequency, bandwidth, power handling, temperature stability, and low insertion loss.- test of a subset of those materials,- preliminary design of two switches based on different ferrite materials- preliminary thermal, RF and high power analysis- test of the switches withvalidation of the thermal models,- multipactor test- selection of best material and final design,- tests and conclusions.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 RD entities in ESA programmes”.

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