On-Board Feed Chain for Combined Q, V-band Feeder and Ka-band

Upcoming Very High Throughput Satellite (VHTS) systems will make use of Ka-band channels for the user beams and higher frequency bands for the gateway links, i.e. Q, V bands. The simplest way to generate the required Ka-band user beam lattice is by means of a set of reflector antennas that make use of focal arrays of feeds. The Q, V-band gateway beams are often located somewhere inside of the Ka-band user service area. The objective of the study is to design, manufacture and test an Engineering Model of a combined Q-, V-band feeder and Ka-band user link feed chain supporting simultaneous transmit and receive operation.