INNOVATIVE APPROACH FOR SATELLITE ANTENNA INTEGRATION AND TEST/VERIFICATION

L.J. Foged, L. Scialacqua, F. Saccardi SATIMO, Pomezia, Italy M. Bandinelli, M. Bercigli, G. Guida IDS, Pisa, Italy G. Giordanengo, F. Vipiana Antenna and EMC Lab, ISMB, Torino, Italy M. Sabbadini ESA/ESTEC, P.O. Box 299, AG 2200 Noordwijk ZH, The Netherlands G. Vecchi Antenna and EMC Lab, Politecnico di Torino, Torino, Italy
ABSTRACT The increasing complexity and stringent performances in RF instruments and payloads often demands that the final RF functional verification is performed on the integrated satellite. In order to minimize the overall time and cost of future Antenna Integration Verification and Test campaigns (AIV/AIT) it is necessary to investigate and develop advanced test methodologies to minimize the test duration. This paper reports the preliminary results of a functional testing solutions for RF end-to-end antenna testing. The proposed approach is based on the intelligent and innovative use of existing measurement capabilities and advanced numerical modeling tools. The scope of the activity is to demonstrate through the implementation of a demonstrator and measurement on suitable hardware the possibility to achieve accurate and fast measurement results using a radical measurement under-sampling with respect to the conventional Nyquist criteria. Keywords: Electromagnetic Testing, Near- Field, Measurements, Sampling, Verification. 1. Introduction Modern telecommunication payloads are excellent examples of the increased satellite testing complexity and have been subject to the development of dedicated testing techniques and hardware in the past [1-14]. Today, complex telecommunication payloads feature tens or hundreds of beams, each operating with frequency reuse and variable connectivity, which need to be characterized accurately to ensure proper in-orbit system performance. In related the area of space science, future missions foresee the use of antennas with hundreds of beams operating over an extremely large frequency band, high beam efficiency and very low noise figures. Finally, Earth observation instruments, like imaging radiometers, synthetic aperture radars and synthetic aperture radiometers have reached a level of complexity that makes strategies for test time reduction very appealing if not already necessary. Considering future planned satellite missions, the sizes of the antennas can reach up to 12 meters in diameter at L-S band and the very large satellites of the next generations becomes prohibitive for the existing quiet zones of conventional Compact Antenna Test Ranges (CATR) or would require major investments into new larger facilities [6-10]. Very large, dedicated near field systems based on planar, cylindrical or spherical scanning geometries are expected to be a viable intermediate solution to achieve a better compromise between accommodation of the device under test and the cost of the measurement facility [1114]. However, due to the sampling criteria the measurement time associated with these tests becomes a serious obstacle. A new and promising testing strategy for time demanding satellite tests scenarios has been presented recently in [14]. The preliminary results, based on theoretical data, demonstrated the possibility to perform accurate and fast antenna measurement with a radical under-sampling of the Near Field (NF) with respect to the conventional Nyquist criteria. This paper reports on the further developments of the techniques and present preliminary results from the testing of a representative multi beam satellite mission in Ku-band.

2. Proposed solution The proposed approach is discussed in some detail in [14]. The proposed solution is based on a robotic arm sniffer system, sampling the radiated near field of the Antenna Under Test (AUT) mounted on the spacecraft. The use of the robot and non-canonical NF scanning allow for the antenna not be positioned optimally for traditional testing. Since the robotic arm NF sampling is slower than a traditional canonical scanning a radical under sampling is needed to make the proposed approach appealing. The radical under sampling is obtained by an interpolation of the measured NF values by a special algorithm taking advantage of the physical information provided by numerical modeling of the antenna. The modeling is performed prior to the measurement. Included in the modeling are several physical permutations of the realistic antenna model of the AUT. This is to generate a selfconsistent representative basis for the expansion of the AUT. If the basis is constructed correctly [14], the measured antenna can be fully represented by a linear combination of the permutated numerical modeling. The actual AUT measurement, then consist in determining the correct coefficients of the linear combination of the expansion basis. The coefficients of the expansion basis is much less than the actual antenna sampling criteria leading to a drastic reduction in the number of measurement samples. 2.1 Advanced robotic arm sniffer system The use of the robotic arm sniffer system approach give access to different scanning and sampling strategies including canonical scanning. The system is based on a Kuka high precision robot [5] and a SATIMO Dual polarized Open-Ended Waveguide DOEW6000 probe with interchangeable apertures covering the frequency band [6-20] GHz as shown in Figure 1. This probe is designed with a radiation pattern nearly identical to traditional circular open ended waveguides on a much wider bandwidth.

Different examples of scanning surfaces that can be performed with the sniffer system are shown in Figure 2 and Figure 3. The assembly of the DOEW6000 precision probe on the robotic arm, is shown in Figure 4.

Figure 2 - Example of planar scanning performed with the proposed sniffer system.

Figure 3 Different sampling strategies: planar, cylindrical and spherical scan surfaces.

Figure 1 - Kuka robot (left) and SATIMO DOEW6000 probe covering the 6-20GHz band (right).

Figure 4 Example of assembly for the advanced measurement sniffer system.

2.2 Antenna Under Test (AUT) The AUT for validation and demonstration of the proposed test technique is a Multibeam antenna system in the frequency range [14-16] GHz. The Multibeam antenna is composed by the SATIMO SR40-A reflector and a feed array of 7 linearly polarized Ku band horns. The feed array configuration is shown in Figure 5. Dimensions of the SATIMO high precision offset parabolic reflector antenna SR40-A are 20 @15GHz. The Multibeam antenna is shown in Figure 6. The Multibeam antenna is equipped with a high precision mechanical flange. The alignment is determined by a precision pin in mechanical interface plate. The horns can be fed and mounted independently on its basement, which is connected to the arm of the reflector. Changing the basement allows to get different array configurations.

2.3 Modelling and simulations of the AUT The AUT, consisting in the Multibeam antenna has been simulated using ADF-EMS tool [17]. The complete simulation, electrical current distribution, of the model of the antenna is shown in Figure 7. Copolar coverage patterns of all beams are shown in Figure 8.

Figure 7 Simulated electrical current distribution on the Multibeam antenna, beam #5 is fed. Figure 5 Feed array configuration of the AUT.

Figure 8 Simulated beam coverage patterns @15GHz. To obtain the induced electrical currents a full-wave approach (Method of Moment) was used. The MoM solution was accelerated by means of Multi-level Fast Multi-pole Algorithm. The Multibeam antenna was discretized into a total of 409,090 triangles and 21 wires, i.e. 613,531 unknowns (613,510 RWG, 14 PWL and 7 attachments). With the purpose of generating a highfidelity model, all the initial CAD external surface was taken into account (i.e. discretized).

Figure 6 Multibeam antenna.

2.4 Reference measurement of the AUT Preliminary analysis of the test technique has been done starting from a reference measurement of the antenna, before using the measured samples by the advanced robotic arm sniffer system. This reference measurement has been done in the SATIMO SG-64 Spherical near field test facility in Paris (SNF), see Figure 9. The measured results have been preliminary compared with the results simulated by ADF-EMS tool. Comparison between simulation and measurement for the beam #2, see Figure 10, shows that the agreement is good.

2.5 Specialized interpolation algorithm As discussed previously, the interpolation algorithm uses a reduced expansion base for the near field to far field transformation formed from permutations of the numerical modeling of the antenna prior to the measurement. There are two relevant constituent of the pre and post processing tools in the proposed approach. The first is the Equivalent Current (EC) expansion that allows forward and backward mapping between NF and FF on arbitrary (non canonical) surfaces. A robust and accurate formulation has been implemented that has already been tested by the team with real data and employed in tasks of industrial relevance [2-4]. The second is the Synthetic Function eXpansion (SFX) as presented in [15]. This technique was developed for efficient MoM simulations, but its theoretical foundations provide an important framework for the integration of simulation and measured data in the present application. 3. Preliminary results of test technique emulation using measured data on the AUT Preliminary evaluation of the achievable performance in terms of accuracy and down sampling ration with respect to conventional measurement techniques has been performed starting from the samples of the reference measurement in the SG-64 Spherical Near Field (SNF) test facility. The simulations of the AUT has been performed by ADF-EMS tool. The reference measurement has been done on a spherical surface constant angular grid set of points and it represents the target measured field. Emulating a measurement scenario by the sniffer system, various subsets of the measured NF points can be selected by the interpolation algorithm for reconstructing the target measured field using a reduced set of measurement points. This approach is not fully representative of the real sniffer system since all NF points must lie on the measurement sphere and on the regular angular grid used by the SG-64, SNF measurement system. However, the constructed test scenario is nevertheless indicative of what can be achieved in the final system implementation. The reference measurement in the SG-64, SNF system was performed using close to 58.000 measurement points. This is very close to the minimum criteria for such AUT measurement considering a minimum sphere of diameter 0.5m or 25 at 15GHz. The Nyquist minimum sampling criteria obtained by dividing the minimum sphere surface in areas of (/2)2 is 31.416 dual polarized field samples.

Figure 9 Multibeam antenna in the SATIMO SG-64 spherical near field test facility in Paris.

Figure 10 Comparison between simulation and measurements (PNF and SNF) of the AUT. Solid lines show co-polar components, dashed lines show cx-polar components.

The far-field reference field and the reconstructed field based on only 909 dual polarized field samples are compared in Figure 11. This number of samples represents a down sampling factor of 34 with respect to

the Nyquist sampling criteria and a factor of 63 with respect to a standard SNF measurement using a regular angular grid over the spherical measurement surface [16]. The difference in AUT peak directivity between the reconstructed field and the reference field obtained using our proposed methodology is shown as a function of the under-sampling factor in Figure 12 (blue curve). The Nyquist criteria is used as the reference sampling minimum level. The 0.27dB directivity difference obtained with under-sampling factor ~34, corresponding to the plots in Figure 11 is highlighted on the plot. When the number of the measured samples is increased the blue curve tends to the red one in Figure 12, which represents the peak directivity difference between the measurement and the best single numerical simulation. The red curve shows the best results that can be expected starting from the actual measurements and simulations used for preliminary testing the methodology.

Figure 12 Peak directivity difference (Beam #2) with respect to the measured samples (the sampling factor is the ratio between the samples of Nyquist and the selected samples). 4. Conclusion The scope of the on-going activity is to demonstrate through the implementation of a demonstrator and measurement on suitable hardware the possibility to achieve accurate and fast measurement results using a radical measurement under-sampling with respect to the conventional Nyquist criteria. The proposed solution is based on an intelligent and innovative use of existing measurement capabilities and advanced numerical modeling tools. The AUT is a multibeam antenna system, widely used in space applications for mobile and broadband communications. Preliminary results, emulating a sniffer type measurement scenario, show that under-sampling factors of ~34 with respect to the conventional Nyquist criteria and a factor of ~63 with respect to a standard regular angular grid SNF measurement can be achieved with this approach. The preliminary testing scenario has shown that it is possible to reconstruct efficiently the general shape and level of the main lobe of the radiation pattern despite the radical under sampling. Theses preliminary results indicate the feasibility of this technique in RF test scenarios to minimize the cost and duration of test campaigns. While reference measurements (see above) can be used for preliminary investigations on the testing technique, the use of the advanced robotic arm sniffer system will lead to a further optimization of the methodology due to the increased degree of freedom of the system. Mechanical aspects of the system, such as the stability and possible vibrations of the robotic arm during movement need to be carefully controlled during the measurements in order to increase the accuracy of the results. Realization of a measurement scenario fully based on the sniffer system approach and demonstration of the testing technique are the next steps of this activity.

Figure 11 Far Field Reconstruction (Beam #2) with respect to the measured Field (top =90, bottom =90).

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