Digital Array Analog to Digital Converter

Today's communication satellites play a major role in the transmission of voice and data for military and commercial applications. The costs associated with satellite development are enormous, not including the cost to launch them into orbit. As a result, it is desired to build satellites with as much capability as possible to achieve the best performance and cost effectiveness. Airborne communication platforms can take advantage of multi-beam phased arrays to support multiple links simultaneously with a reduced number of apertures. Furthermore, high data rates can be supported by digitally combining multiple sub-array modules. This would require the use of suitable digital array ADCs that would allow the combination of multiple sub-arrays by enabling signal processing techniques to suppress interference and to form links with other satellites. Current ADC devices are unable to meet the desired performance requirements and operate in the required EHF range. A state of the art ADC architecture must be developed to adequately handle these extreme requirements. Systran Federal Corp. believes that a viable solution lies in the development of a new digital array ADC architecture based on several possible technologies, including, the Nyquist rate and Oversampling Delta Sigma ADC architectures.