Q/V-band feed system development

The development of a slimline Q/V-band feed system engineering model (EM) suitable for multi-beam antenna applications and feed spacing of around 26mm is described. This new feed product will extend telecoms satellite capacity by using Q/V-band for gateway links and maximising the Ka-band spectrum for broadband user links. Following an initial feed architecture trade off and breadboard phase for critical feed components, a generic wideband feed architecture was selected for full EM feed development. This comprises a wideband feed horn, wide band polariser, wide band Ortho-mode Transducer (OMT), and a pair of triplexers to accommodate the most challenging filter frequency plan. Predicted and measured performance is presented. The work has been carried out in the frame of an ARTES 5.2 project.