Home // International Journal On Advances in Telecommunications, volume 8, numbers 3 and 4, 2015 // View article

Ensuring Radio Frequency Compatibility (RFC) on-Board a Satellite by Early Analysis and Efficient Methods for Field Prediction

Authors:
Jens Timmermann
Christian Imhof
Dieter Lebherz
Jörg Lange

Keywords: MetOp-SG; Radio Frequency Compatibility; coupling factor; knife-edge diffraction; baffle attenuation

Abstract:
Transmitters (=Tx) on-board a satellite generate an electromagnetic environment with potential impact on victim receivers (=Rx, e.g., instruments) placed nearby. Ensuring Radio Frequency Compatibility (RFC) on-board a satellite ishence an important point to be considered during satellite design and requires an optimized satellite configuration. This contribution concentrates on RFC issues in practical satellite design by considering the future MetOp-SG meteorological satellites: First, an overview is given summarizing the various transmitters and instrument receivers on-board the satellites. Then, the fundamentals of RFC analysis are presented showing the method how to compute the coupling factor between a Tx and a victim Rx. To improve the decoupling, MetOp-SG satellites are housing dedicated baffles between Tx and Rx antennas. Therefore, the contribution finally studies in detail the signal attenuation caused by a baffle by comparing two methods: field simulation and an extended knife-edge diffraction theory. By combining both methods, the overall engineering and computation effort to optimize the baffle design is minimized.

Pages: 152 to 161

Copyright: Copyright (c) to authors, 2015. Used with permission.

Publication date: December 30, 2015

Published in: journal

ISSN: 1942-2601