W and V band Airborne SATCOM Transceiver

ABSTRACT: The proposed work is to develop a high integration, single transmit, multiple receive, digital beamforming, airborne SATCOM transceiver. This can be accomplished by using advanced GaN technologies for the transmitter SSPA and InP technologies for the receiver LNA. Furthermore, we propose to integrate most of the receiver functions (e.g. the LNA, mixer, etc.) on a single InP chip. This will reduce the cost and enhance the performance of the receiver. The receiver array will be part of the digital beamforming circuit countering antenna pointing error. BENEFIT: The key W/V band transceiver technologies developed for this program can benefit future DoD, NASA, and upcoming commercial satellite communication systems. For DoD, the results of this SBIR research topic can be directly applied to future MILSATCOM programs. For example, Air Force has an ongoing W/V band Satellite Communications Experiments (WSCE) program using the same frequency allocation plan. This is a strong indication that the proposed work is completely in sync with the trend of future space terminal and communication link development. NASA and other space agencies are involved in a program called"Integrated Interplanetary Network. W-band is one of the main frequency bands this program plan to use to relay data from landers, rovers, satellites, back to Earth. Commercially, the data crowding at the current Ku/Ka band satellites is well documented. ESA has been experimenting Q/V satellite link systems (AlphaSat for example.) Several W-band projects, such as DAVID Mission and WAVE Project, are designed to perform preliminary tests for the commercial use of the W-band. The fact that FCC allows non-exclusive use of these bands by private sectors will speed up the arrival of W/V band satellite era. This research will benefit these and other upcoming opportunities.