Launching Optimized High Power Consolidated millimetre wave RF filters to Space

This article featured in the October 2021 issue of the 2021 NAFEMS World Congress edition of BENCHMARK

High-power radio frequency (RF) passive components are critical for satellite communications payloads and are required to handle increasingly larger peak/average powers over the entire frequency spectrum in the transmit path of the communication link. For reliability assurance, these high-power RF devices must be proven to be safe and free of high-power related failure phenomena such as multipaction breakdowns. The industry mainly relies on testing to mitigate system failure. Since it’s crucial and challenging to reproduce space conditions in lab, the testing procedure is considerably expensive, time-consuming, and unreliable. The presented work leverages the privileges of using physically-based simulation technology from design through to the manufacturing process of an optimized and consolidated passive RF filter that will be safely launched to space for satellite communication.