INTERFEROMETRIC ANTENNAS AT KU- AND KA-BAND WITH MODEST BASELINES FOR WIDE SWATH ALTIMETRY – EXPRO PLUS
13, October 2015

ESA Open Invitation To Tender AO8460
Open Date: 12/10/2015
Closing Date: 10/12/2015

Status: ISSUED
Reference Nr.: 15.1EE.28
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: Electromagnetics and Space Environment D
Contract Officer: Elena Grashchenkova
Last Update Date: 12/10/2015
Update Reason: Tender issue

The objective is to study possible antenna architectures for Ku-Band and Ka-Band radar interferometer instrument with modest baseline for wide swath altimetry. The instrument design would require one transmit/receive and one receive antenna (see e.g. CRYOSAT/SIRAL antenna concept), each being separated of about 2.5 meters from each other, that shall be accommodated on a single satellite. The antenna baseline shall be nadir looking. The antennas shall be designed to generate 2 mirror off nadir beams in elevation (across-track) of few degrees (typically +/-3deg). The interferometric baseline vector needs to be both very stable in orbit and known with a very high accuracy in orbit. The following tasks shall be performed: – A literature search shall be done to investigate possible material, technologies and antenna architectures (radiating aperture and feeding system) for both Ku and Ka-Bands. – A brief description of the mission and the instrument shall be provided. The relevant mission and instrument requirements shall be provided as justification for the establishment of the antenna specifications. The antenna specifications shall be provided accordingly. – Antenna architectures (reflector based or DRA antenna solutions) shall be proposed while meeting overall system requirements, with a particular attention paid on stability requirements, deployment requirements and launcher accommodation constraints. – A trade off analysis shall be performed and 2 different antenna architectures shall be selected for further detailed analysis. – A detailed analysis (RF, mechanical , thermal) for the 2 architectures shall be carried out – Solutions to accurately obtain the in-orbit stability of interferometric baseline (attitude and length) shall be proposed with an associated error budget . – Solutions for calibrating the antenna baseline (calibration) shall be investigated and their accuracies shall be assessed.

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