Development of an Integrated RF Front End

An Integrated RF Front End in Ku-band designed for low cost and mass production is described. The main design goals were: small size, to be within the satellite operators specifications and to have potential for mass production at low cost. In order to have a compact unit, a small Ortho Mode Transducer was developed which is the main building block. The Tx and Rx converter chains were developed to fit on each side of the OMT, with an interface at L-band. Two oscillators were developed using a Sampling Phase Detector, to phase lock the oscillators to a reference signal at 50 MHz. A sytnhesizer is included to allow ext. ref. in the range 3 to 50 MHz. The development is supported by ESA.