TICRA signs major contract with ESA

01 May 2013

TICRA has signed a contract with ESA’s research and technology centre, ESTEC, which will pave the way for a future prediction tool able to assess radiation patterns and interference effects of multiple telecommunications satellite reflector antennas when mounted on a spacecraft platform. An important feature of the tool is the possibility to combine it with the well-established and validated GRASP.

The satellite model shown above, kindly provided by M. Sabbadini, ESTEC, clearly illustrates the commonly encountered problem when designing telecommunications antennas: a multitude of antennas, cramped onto a platform that leaves little room for the individual patterns to radiate without some interaction with the other antennas. Today the antennas are designed, developed and validated based on their isolated performance, and the interaction analysis can only be performed in GRASP using a simplistic model of the platform. Consequently, the antenna designer needs to combine several additional tools to thoroughly analyze the antennas in their true environment.

The objective of the new project is to enhance the capabilites of GRASP with novel analysis techniques that will allow the antenna designer to model the influence of the antenna farm as an inherent part of the antenna design in GRASP. The new tool avoids the current data exchange between GRASP and additional scattering tools, leading to a faster design process and reducing the risk of errors. Also, the tool will lead to a more accurate design due to the detailed modelling of the platform offered. The new tool will enable a flexible definition of complex platforms by combining high-level parametric models with general CAD-models.

We at TICRA are looking forward to working with ESTEC on this new, exciting project, which has a scheduled duration of 18 months, after which time we will endeavour to commercialize the tool and make it available to the industry.

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