High Accuracy Antenna Pointing System

Objectives

The objectives are:

• To analyse antenna pointing errors budget and investigate the techniques and technologies required to increase pointing accuracy for broadband multiple high gain pencil beams.
• To identify the methodology and the hardware/software required for the antenna pointing determination and correction for single and multiple feed per beam concepts.
• To consolidate an achievable antenna pointing error budget required for future Multimedia Mission.
• To produce the associated technology development plan and cost at the final Review.

Features

In order to conduct this study, it is necessary to perform the following set of activities:

• Survey of the state of the art and a consolidation of the requirements.
• Trade-off analysis shall be performed for the 2 multiple beams antenna configurations:
  Single Feed per Beam (SFB) and Array Fed Reflector (AFR).
  Four preliminary architectures, ie one baseline and one backup solution per antenna configuration, shall be defined and a preliminary sub-system design shall be performed.
• Development and validation of a simulator tool,
• Determination of performance of the four Antenna pointing system (APS) architectures.
• Identification of the critical technologies and creation of a technology roadmap defining follow-on activities and providing associated ROM costs.

Project Plan

The project shall be carried out within a timeframe of 14 months with the following milestones:

Challenges

The study will identify architecture and critical technologies required to fulfil the future demand in High Accuracy Antenna Pointing Systems to cope with highly demanding multimedia missions using very small beamwidth (up to 0.2 degrees).

Benefits

Current Status (dated: 24 Sep 2010)

Negotiation meeting held with ESA on the 17th of September 2010.
System requirements review was held on the 10th of December 2010