Anokiwave, Inc. and Ball Aerospace are continuing their collaboration to develop and enable the next generation of SATCOM terminal solutions adding a Ku-band option to the portfolio of flat panel phased array antennas — with the new portfolio of either Ku- or K/Ka-band antennas, customers have the flexibility to meet their broadband service needs.
Ball Aerospace brings an innovative approach to the design of either a Ku- or K-/Ka-band system. Each antenna can be designed with the same footprint, allowing a consistent terminal baseplate, chassis and interfaces that can be swapped based on the user’s broadband service needs. Using the same architecture to target both Ku- and K-/Ka-band allows development efficiency and cost advantages by leveraging the same manufacturing, test, and qualification infrastructure.
Anokiwave continues to provide Ku-band Silicon SATCOM beamforming ICs that improve performance, reduce cost, simplify thermal management, and provide a host of unique digital functionality to simplify overall system design.
Ball Aerospace offers flat panel electronically steered antennas with modular subarrays that can be tiled together to form an antenna that is optimized to the mission needs of the customer without the cost of antenna re-design. The company has completed over-the-air testing of both its Anokiwave IC enabled Ku- and K-/Ka-band subarrays and has measured results showing transmit and receive performance over scan, switchable polarization and tapering. These test results matched, and in most cases beat, modeled estimates.
Abhishek Kapoor, Anokiwave VP of Sales, said the Anokiwave SATCOM IC portfolio offers Ball Aerospace options for both Ku- and K-/Ka-band ICs with unmatched performance and features. This is a unique first in the industry as Ball Aerospace can now deliver flat panel electronically steered antennas that meet performance, operating band and total cost of ownership targets. Driving the delicate balance of cost and performance of the ICs has been a key challenge to the mass adoption of active antennas for satellite communications.
Jake Sauer, VP and GM, Tactical Solutions, Ball Aerospace, added that the industry is starting to move to a model where SATCOM communications equipment is disaggregated from satellite operators and service providers. Ball has developed an antenna architecture with the Anokiwave ICs that gives customers the choice to target either Ku- or K-/Ka-band broadband service for LEO, MEO, and GEO satellites and allows the end user the flexibility to meet both their short- and long-term service needs.
