SATURNE Microsystems Based on Wide Band Gap Materials for Future Space Transmitting Ultra Wideband Receiving Systems
The next generation of satellites is set to be lig hter, cheaper, and more flexible. Such a technological leap forward is dependent on the development of novel Radio Frequency (RF) front ends, empowering operators to tune the characteristics of the payloads, even when the satellites are in orbit. The project SATURNE addresses this challenge.
When predicting the future, a basic known is the unknown. However, today when companies commission satellites, they are asked to anticipate and define requirements for the whole of the lifetime of the satellite, which might be 15 years.
lndeed, today each satellite is tailor made for its specific purpose.This increases its cost, and limits flexibility as to its use, since once launched, changing the wavelength of the signal the satellite sends back to Earth is impossible. The next generation of satellites is set to be radically different.
Developing flexible RF front ends that enable changing the wavelength of satellite signais in orbit amounts to a technological breakthrough: Mass production of satellite components would be possible - supporting future satellite payloads at lower cost, with smaller mass and with more flexibility, since operators would no longer be required to think decades ahead, but instead simply progressively adapt satellites to new use.
The main concept of the SATURNE project is to realise such novel types of microwave functions. By means of Wide Band Gap (WBG) semiconductors and RF-MEMS switches, the project seeks to enable the development of re-configurable and highly power efficient communication satellite payloads with narrow-, multi- or wide-band channel allocation, at the benefitofoperators, including environ-mental monitoring and cartography in X-band.
For the European space industry, a world market leader in the do-main of commercial satellites, the prospect of such mass production of light and flexible satellites represents a significant industrial potential.