ESA Open Invitation to Tender AO9737
Open Date: 26/09/2019
Closing Date: 17/12/2019 13:00:00

Status: ISSUED
Reference Nr.: 19.1TT.20
Prog. Ref.: CC for Advanced Tech
Budget Ref.: E/0505-01C – CC for Advanced Tech
Special Prov.: BE+DK+FR+DE+IT+NL+ES+SE+CH+GB+IE+AT+NO+FI+PT+GR+LU+CZ+RO+CA
Tender Type: C
Price Range: > 500 KEURO
Products: Satellites & Probes / RF / Microwave Communication (Platform and Payloads) / „Communication – BB (Antennas excluded)” / Other
Technology Domains: RF Systems, Payloads and Technologies / RF Technologies and Equipment / RF Devices
Establishment: ESTEC
Directorate: Directorate Telecom & Integrated Applica
Department: Telecom Technologies,Product&Systems Dep
Division: Technologies and Products Division
Contract Officer: Rinaudo, Nicole
Industrial Policy Measure: N/A – Not apply
Last Update Date: 26/09/2019
Update Reason: Tender issue

The objective of this activity is to design, manufacture and test compact broadband input filters at C-band and at Ku-band based ondielectric materials.Advanced manufacturing processes shall be employed for the engineering models to reduce the number of piece parts.Targeted Improvements:Footprint reduction of C-band and Ku-band input filters by 50% whilst maintaining all electrical performance parameters in comparison to the currentstate of the art.Description: Telecommunication satellite payloads are becoming more complex, requiring higher data capacity together with higher equipment packing density.Input filters located in the payload receiver front-end operate over a broadband frequency range, rejecting out of band noise together with interfering signals. The main drivers for the input filters are the bandwidth, spurious free range, insertion loss, size and mass. Current solutions are mostly basedonrectangular waveguide, combline and ridge filter technologies. Filter solutions based on waveguide provide low insertionloss butare bulky, whilst thosebased on combline or ridge waveguide are more compact at the expense of increased insertion loss.C-Band and Ku-Band state of the art input filters are large and bulky. Innovative filtering structures based on dielectrically loaded waveguide resonators,together with additive manufacturing, offer a significant size and footprint reduction of at least 50%, withminimum penalties in term of RFperformance.In this activity, two compact broadband input filter engineering models utilising dielectric materials will be designed, manufactured and tested, oneoperating in C-band and the other in Ku-band. Advanced manufacturingprocesses shall be employed for the engineering models to minimise thenumber of piece parts.