ASTRA 3B horn antenna design
Ver/
Fecha
2010Versión
Acceso abierto / Sarbide irekia
Tipo
Contribución a congreso / Biltzarrerako ekarpena
Impacto
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nodoi-noplumx
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Resumen
The ASTRA 3B satellite includes 60 Ku-band state-of-the-
art transponders and 4 Ka-band transponders. The
spacecraft have been designed for the distribution of
both direct-to-home (DTH) broadcast services and two way
broadband services across Europe. After Astra 2B
and Astra 1M, Astra 3B is the third Astra satellite to be
built by ASTRIUM.
Two different horn antennas, for Ku- and Ka-bands,
were d ...
[++]
The ASTRA 3B satellite includes 60 Ku-band state-of-the-
art transponders and 4 Ka-band transponders. The
spacecraft have been designed for the distribution of
both direct-to-home (DTH) broadcast services and two way
broadband services across Europe. After Astra 2B
and Astra 1M, Astra 3B is the third Astra satellite to be
built by ASTRIUM.
Two different horn antennas, for Ku- and Ka-bands,
were designed with very stringent requirements as it is
usually required for space applications. For the horns
the cross-polar levels should be below -45 dB, and the
return loss below -30dB for all frequency bands.
Normally the horn aperture is fixed by the required
illumination of the reflector edges, so it is difficult to
reduce the aperture size of a horn antenna. Nevertheless,
thanks to the design technique used, the relation
between the output aperture and the total horn length for
the Ka-band was approximately 0.56 and for the Kuband
was something like 0.76. This means that the
lengths of the horn antennas are 1.8 and 1.32 times the
respective apertures.
Furthermore, the taper and the phase center movement
inside the respective bandwidths could be controlled
and limited to certain limits during the optimization
procedure, obtaining a very efficient configuration when
they were combined with the reflectors.
The horn antennas were based on the combination of
horizontal and vertical corrugations and they were
designed by the Antenna group of the Public University
of Navarra. [--]
Materias
ASTRA 3B satellite,
Horn antennas
Notas
Trabajo presentado al 32nd ESA Antenna Technology Workshop. Holanda, 2010.
Departamento
Universidad Pública de Navarra. Departamento de Ingeniería Eléctrica y Electrónica /
Nafarroako Unibertsitate Publikoa. Ingeniaritza Elektrikoa eta Elektronikoa Saila