This paper will address key technologies under development at the NASA Glenn Research Center designed to provide architecture-level impacts. Specifically, we will describe deployable antennas, a new type of phased array antenna and novel power amplifiers. The evaluation of architectural influence can be conducted from two perspectives where said architecture can be analyzed from either the top-down to determine the areas where technology improvements will be most beneficial or from the bottom-up where each technology s performance advancement can affect the overall architecture s performance. This paper will take the latter approach with focus on some technology improvement challenges and address architecture impacts. For example, using data rate as a performance metric, future exploration scenarios are expected to demand data rates possibly exceeding 1 Gbps. To support these advancements in a Mars scenario, as an example, Ka-band and antenna aperture sizes on the order of 10 meters will be required from Mars areostationary platforms. Key technical challenges for a large deployable antenna include maximizing the ratio of deployed-to-packaged volume, minimizing aerial density, maintaining RMS surface accuracy to within 1/20 of a wavelength or better, and developing reflector rigidization techniques. Moreover, the high frequencies and large apertures manifest a new problem for microwave engineers that are familiar to optical communications specialists: pointing. The fine beam widths and long ranges dictate the need for electronic or mechanical feed articulation to compensate for spacecraft attitude control limitations.


    Access

    Access via TIB

    Check availability in my library


    Export, share and cite



    Title :

    RF Technologies for Advancing Space Communication Infrastructure


    Contributors:

    Conference:

    2006 IEEE Aerospace Conference ; 2006 ; Big Sky, MT, United States


    Publication date :

    2006-01-01


    Type of media :

    Conference paper


    Type of material :

    No indication


    Language :

    English




    RF technologies for advancing space communication infrastructure

    Bibyk, I. / Romanofsky, R. / Wintucky, E. | IEEE | 2006


    Advancing Military-Relevant Space Technologies

    Tsien, W. / Finley, C. / Mocio, M. et al. | British Library Conference Proceedings | 2003


    Advancing Military-Relevant Space Technologies

    Tsien, Wendy / Finley, Charles / Mocio, Mark et al. | AIAA | 2003


    Digital Technologies for Advancing Robotic Space Exploration

    Moon-Burke, Melissa M / James, Larry | NTRS | 2021


    Rotational technologies for space infrastructure

    SATHYANARAYAN DEEPAK | European Patent Office | 2023

    Free access