White Papers

Today and into the future, high-frequency Ka-Band microwave technology will enable broadband Satellite communications. Defence users world-wide are leveraging the ‘30.0 to 31.0GHz’ Military band for global satellite networks that support mobile battlefield communications. Modern armed forces demand high-speed communications for voice, data and streaming video to maintain situational awareness and for rapid dissemination of command & control decisions.

GaN FETs offer significant benefits over their GaAs based counterparts. Higher efficiency, wider bandwidth, improved reliability and higher output powers are just some of their features. Now GaN PA MMICs are available at Ka-band. What are BUC vendors doing to make the most of this exciting new development?

This paper outlines some of the technology changes that EM Solutions is developing in order to harness the power of GaN.

The National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) has developed a Ka-band mobile earth station which achieves 24 Mbps in land mobile regions using the wideband internet engineering test and demonstration satellite. The mobile earth station is installed with a dual reflector antenna of 650 mm diameter, a block up converter with an output of 20 W, and a mono-pulse tracking system with 3-axis gimbals mechanisms for satellite tracking and communications. Using this terminal, the transmission data rate of 18 Mbps were confirmed. High definition television (HDTV) transmission was also conducted using an onboard HDTV camera in suburban and expressway areas. In this test, successful HDTV transmission was confirmed under the moving conditions.

This paper was presented at the AIAA ICSSC 2015 conference organised by EM Solutions.

EM Solutions’ technologies power broadband nano-satellite communications.

The constraints placed upon small satellite design for remote sensing missions have traditionally been power availability, heat dissipation and aperture requirements. However as small satellite sensor technology approaches the 1-meter resolution threshold, data throughput is becoming a new and particularly challenging constraint on mission design.

Solid State Ka-band Transmitters Power Broadband Satellite Communications. The purpose of this article is to describe the approach EM Solutions has taken to become one

EM Solutions was awarded a contract to develop a Mounted Battle Command Ka-band Satcom On-The-Move System under the Australian Defence Force (ADF) Capability and Technology

EM Solutions staff presented an unprecedented six technical papers at the AIAA International Communication Satellite Systems Conference held on Australia’s Gold Coast in September 2015.

Along with sixty other presenters, from ten countries, our staff presented their technical achievements in the areas of on-the-move satellite terminals, power amplifiers, low noise amplifiers, and associated design issues. These all related to the conference theme broadband, high throughput communications over satellite – also EM Solutions’ principal area of expertise.

We are pleased to be able to share their work with you below:

There are many X-band and Ku-band satellite tracking antennas for On-The-Move (OTM) applications, but only a few products have been developed for Ka-band. With the deployment of the Wideband Gapfiller Satellites (WGS) the demand for OTM Terminals at Ka-band will increase.

The Ka-band (20/30GHz) satellite offers excellent potential for transportable and mobile communications due to the wide bandwidth available and the high gain achievable with small

Military Satcom network engineers need to consider non linear effects of transmissions where signal levels are low or multiple carriers occupy a narrow bandwidth. Non linear characteristics of some Ka-band amplifiers behaviour differently to Ku-band and X-band amplifiers, and therefore there is a need to carefully measure the performance of Ka-band amplifiers when selecting for use on Wideband Global SATCOM (WGS).