High linear 17W smart L/C-band transmitter unit for mobile communication satellite

An integrated, high efficiency, very linear high power solid state amplifier upconverter has been developed for use in a commercial mobile satellite communication system. The amplifier/upconverter provides a gain of about 65 dB and an output power in excess of 17 Watt for a multi carrier signal operation with an associated DC-to-RF efficiency greater than 21 %. The noise power ratio (NPR) for this operating point is 19 dB. The linearized amplifier/upconverter shows an improvement of about 3 dB in the output back-off compared to the non-linearized one for a given NPR of 30.0 dB. The mass of the compact transmitter unit is 1250 gram including low noise amplifier, upconverter, linearizer, SSPA and EPC.