SHF antenna farm

The satellites of the German National Program are two identical military communication systems providing SHF and UHF communication services. The paper will focus on the SHF antenna farm which was developed, manufactured and tested at EADS Astrium GmbH. After an outline of all antennas on the German National Program satellites, the qualification and RF performance of the SHF feed systems is presented. The next section deals with the structural design of the SHF antenna farm. A short overview of the environmental testing is followed by some RF measurement results. Finally, the PIM performance of the antenna farms is shown.