Abstract
Current flight solutions for Large Deployable Antennas (LDA) most commonly employ the use of highly flexible metal wire knitted meshes as a reflector surface material. These surfaces, also known as ‘tricot meshes’, are normally realized using gold plated molybdenum and tungsten wires and require tensioning in the range of 5-10g/cm to obtain sufficient electrical contact between wires and to reduce surface RMS deformation to an acceptable level. The cell or facet size of a knitted mesh is determined by the operating frequency; the higher the frequency the higher the cell density required. Meshes are well known for lower frequency (L and S-band) applications but the challenges of operating LDAs at desired higher frequencies (Ka-band) means metal mesh surfaces require increasingly complex cable tensioning nets and a deviation away from proven mesh materials. High frequency operation of metal meshes also increases the likelihood of Passive Intermodulation (PIM) occurring and thus a degradation in the performance of the antenna.
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Lawton, M., Reveles, J.R., You, Z., Dove-Jay, A., Khan, A., Fraux, V. (2018). Cost Disruptive Reflector Surface for Large Deployable Antennas. In: Hatton, S. (eds) Proceedings of the 13th Reinventing Space Conference. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-32817-1_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-32817-1_10
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Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
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