Technology & Innovation

EM Solutions strives to maintain its position as a world-leading company recognised for offering technologically superior microwave modules and systems for next generation broadband communications. Our engineering team possesses a wealth of understanding and experience in the complex manipulation of electromagnetic energy. For more than 25 years, we have developed products at frequencies from L-band (1GHz) to Ku-band (18GHz). These products are mature, proven, and reliable.

However, with the push for broadband communications, Ka-band (27.5 to 31.0GHz) products are increasingly in demand. EM Solutions has become one of the world’s foremost suppliers of microwave components and subsystems across the entire Ka-band. Unlike Ku-band and lower frequencies, the design and manufacture of solid-state high power Ka-band components requires a unique combination of expertise in both microstrip and waveguide techniques, where mechanical and electromagnetic constraints present unique challenges. With electromagnetic radiation effects much more subtle at Ka-band frequencies, and with greater susceptibility to parasitic effects and losses, significantly greater attention is required in the engineering of these components, particularly at high power levels, where classical microstrip techniques are inadequate on their own to efficiently obtain the bandwidths, power levels, and efficiencies required of state-of-the-art microwave transceivers.

Capabilities

EM Solutions is now a leading supplier of microwave modules and systems to both defence and commercial customers around the world. Our experience and capability includes developing highly integrated RF subsystems for X-, Ku- and Ka-band satcom terminals - purpose designed for specific customer requirements. This requires the design of planar RF and microwave circuits from 10MHz up to 40GHz; power combining and dividing techniques; high power amplifiers and linearisers; low noise amplifiers; frequency synthesisers; passive modules (filters, couplers, etc.); antennas; and waveguide filters. Our capability also includes failure analysis and modelling of oscillators; investigation of spurious signals, leakage, and ripple; low phase noise design; and phase-hit avoidance and recovery.

Power combiners, filters, and high-power solid state amplifiers

EM Solutions is one of the world’s few top-tier suppliers of Ka-band RF components. We believe our engineering is unsurpassed. Although many companies claim the capability to engineer and deliver solid-state products in the Ka-Band frequency range, careful examination will often show those claims cannot be substantiated. At lower frequencies, higher power levels can be achieved by combining power from multiple devices using microstrip couplers. That binary combinatorial approach cannot be simply extended to Ka-band, for it results in high cost, unacceptable power losses, and narrow bandwidths. Instead, EM Solutions uses a unique three-dimensional waveguide combining technique that allows power from any arbitrary number of devices to be combined serially and in the industry’s smallest volume packages. This modular approach based on clever use of electromagnetics achieves the highest power “density” possible, using the least number of active devices, and results in better reliability, power efficiency and lower component cost. Our 16W Ka-band NanoBUC’s are the industry’s lightest and smallest available, ideal for mounting directly at the antenna feed of even the smallest terminal.

Lineariser technology

In addition, when loaded with a typical satcom signal, microwave transmitters must be “backed-off” from their nominal (single-tone) 1dB power compression point, in order to preserve signal linearity and prevent unwanted spectral regrowth. That lowers both efficiency and power output. EM Solutions’ approach instead is to use its own integrated, proprietary lineariser technology, delivering a linearised BUC (block upconvertor) power transmit module that minimizes the power lost due to back-off and maintains both output power and power efficiency that would otherwise be lost. Because it operates directly at the microwave source, it is independent of the type of modulation or coding system used. Although the addition of a lineariser adds some cost to the final BUC, its inclusion guarantees linearity and integrity of output power that would otherwise require specification of higher nominal power levels that would prove even more costly. In our linearised Ka-Band solid state power amplifier/BUC specifications, we reference both saturated power and linear power as this helps customers determine the most suitable and cost-effective product to deliver the overall terminal performance needed to deliver the bandwidth.

Low phase-hit synthesisers

EM Solutions has also engineered a proprietary oscillator topology for use in its Ka-band block up-converters. Lower frequency oscillators typically use a dielectric resonator (DRO) to achieve their stability and low phase noise, but at higher frequencies these are more prone to microphonic effects, due to the smaller wavelength interacting more strongly with the mechanical resonator tuning plate. EM Solutions’ synthesiser technology uses a dual loop oscillator that avoids the use of a dielectric resonator, and that has proven invaluable for example in the environmental conditions on marine vessels, where our technology provides significantly fewer phase hits under vibration compared to traditional DRO technology with similar phase noise.

System integration

When the Australian military went looking for a supplier of a satellite terminal (for its new Ka-band WGS satellite constellation) that could mount on top of its four-wheel drive Bushmaster vehicle, and that could communicate with the satellite even when the vehicle was driving off-road, it could not find a supplier anywhere in the world. The challenges of designing a complete tracking platform that could find the satellite and keep an antenna pointed to within 0.2 degrees of the satellite, and couple it with a complete microwave transmitter and receiver, were beyond any other company. Yet within twelve months, EM Solutions was able to demonstrate a working prototype of such an “on-the-move” terminal [insert link to SOTM video here]. That prototype system has now been engineered for production and WGS certification, and is currently in delivery. Our knowledge of electromagnetics and digital processing has allowed us to devise a unique closed-loop tracking method that uses the microwave beacon signal itself to derive a pointing error and to drive the system to its correct position, without the use of GPS input.