Current Status of the High-Efficiency L-band Transmit/Receive Module Development for SAR Systems

Large, lightweight, high power, L-band phasedarrays are required to enable future NASA synthetic aperture radar (SAR) missions. The transmit/receive (TIR) module is a key component in SAR antennas and the TIR module efficiency has direct implications on the power dissipation and power generation requirements of the system. Significant improvements in the efficiency of the TIR module will make SAR missions more feasible and affordable. The efforts described in this paper are part of a three-year on-going task sponsored by the NASA Earth Science Technology Office (ESTO) under the Advanced Component Technology (ACT) program. We will describe the current status and recent results of a novel TIR module technology to achieve ultra-high efficiencies. The TIR module performance goal is to achieve an overall module efficiency greater than 70% with a minimum of 30-Watts output power at L-band frequencies.