The objective of this activity shall be to investigate very high power amplifiers based on solid state European GaN technology. Unlike the amplifiers available today, GaN technology shall offer the possibility to build such HPA with only one power module at the output.

New architecture/design of the receiver processing chain can contribute in improving the performance. Recent increases in the computational power of computers and digital signal processors have made possible novel signal tracking techniques in GNSS receivers, so that both the Signal processing and the Navigation processing can be optimised or even combined in to one single estimation algorithm.

X BAND DOWNLINK ANTENNA EQM S/N: 001 has been designed, manufactured and tested at EQM levels.
From the initial to the final RF electrical tests, the performances do not suffer any degradation ( neither shock test nor random test).
No damage has been detected during the overall vibration test sequence:
Vibration test:
- On axes X and Y no significant frequency shifting (higher than 10%) and response
amplitude variation (higher than 50%) are measured between each sine survey.

BIOMASS, a candidate Earth Explorer mission in Phase A, proposes to measure ice flows over Earth's major ice sheets as a secondary objective in its side-looking observation geometry. On the other hand, P-band ice sounding radar mission concepts have been proposed already for Earth Explorers (e.g. MIMOSA, CARISMA) for obtaining three-dimensional characteristics of ice sheets and underlying bedrock topography.

A successful test campaign has been performed over the UHF antenna. The UHF ANTENNA has been tested from the RF point of view and all required performances were compliant. The vibration test campaign can be considered successful since: No damage was detected during the overall vibration and shock (qualification levels) test sequence:

Plastic marine litter is becoming a major environmental concern. Microwaves (MW) have potential for remote detection of floating macroplastics operating from Satellites or Airborne platforms, but very scarce and limited studies exist in the literature using MW. We present the first results of a systematic study on MW scattering of floating low-mass macroplastics at 2-20 GHz frequency band using radar techniques.