Large-scale test facilities

Our large (18m x 18m x 14m high) shielded, anechoic chamber is designed to accommodate satellites and payloads up to 7,000kg. This​ provides the electrically isolated environment in which EMC tests can be carried out safely and accurately. 

The chamber houses a large planar near-field antenna measurement system. Our team will help you evaluate the outputs from your satellite and validate its antenna performance over a wide frequency range using a near-fi​eld planar scanner – ideal for measuring the performance of antennas used for communications between the satellite and ground stations. 

This chamber provides a clean environment, both physically and electrically, so that a satellite’s electromagnetic characteristics can be accurately measured: 

• Shielded and isolated 
• Powered from filtered, isolating transformers 
• Connected to a separate clean earth that can be disconnected from the general protective earth of the building 
• Filtered data connections 
• Anechoic chamber walls and ceilings lined with absorbing material, pyramidal foam tiles, to prevent reflections of electromagnetic signals. And movable absorber tiles that we can use to cover the floor of the chamber. 
• ISO8 clean room 
• Electrostatic discharge controlled 

• A vertical planar near-field scanner, 12m by 12m, suitable for measuring higher gain antennas up to several metres in diameter
• Four axis system including active Z-axis control to achieve the required X-Y scan planarity and probe rotation to include cross-polarisation measurements
• Probes and standard gain horns for measurement frequencies from 500 MHz to 75 GHz in linear or circular polarisations
• Commercial software to acquire the near-field data, convert to the far-field, extract beam parameters and produce plots, etc.
• Includes a payload test suite for antenna equivalent isotropic radiated power (EIRP), saturated flux density (SFD), gain to noise temperature (G/T), etc. measurements

The antenna measurement system has been validated using the industry standard validation antenna standards (VAST) antennas developed by Denmark Technical University and the European Space Agency (ESA). These have provided us with 18-term error budgets for the system with accuracies of ±0.2 dB on peak gain measurements.

We have our own versions of the VAST that have been characterised during the system validation. These are used for regular re-validation and training.

Our EMC test capabilities include:

• Conducted Susceptibility
• Conducted Emissions
• E-Field Radiated Susceptibility (up to 40 GHz)
• E-Field Radiated Emissions (up to 40 GHz)
• ESD and Transient testing

Test Standards

We will usually follow the EMC Test standard ECSS-E-ST-20-07C for the tests listed above, with the ability to tailor tests to customer requirements or optionally follow the relevant sections of MIL-STD-461G. 

With our shielded anechoic chamber and our high-power wall and associated safety systems we can support customer-led satellite auto-compatibility and passive intermodulation (PIM) testing. 

Our four high-power wall modules provide a total reconfigurable area of 2.4m x 2.4m with a maximum power handling capability of 3 W/cm2. We will look for hot-spots using a thermal camera and, if required, operate the facility with a reduced oxygen content to prevent combustion of absorber material. 

The facility includes a separate 78m2 shielded room adjacent to the main chamber, dedicated to customer electrical ground support equipment (EGSE). This has feedthrough panels and tunnels for cabling to the test item and includes single and three-phase power supplies.