A nonlinear equivalent circuit method for analysis of passive intermodulation of mesh reflectors

作者：Jiang Jie; Li Tuanjie^*; Ma Xiaofei; Wang Pei

来源：Chinese Journal of Aeronautics, 2014, 27(4): 924-929.

DOI：10.1016/j.cja.2014.03.003

• Contact nonlinearity
• Equivalent circuit
• Mesh reflector
• Metal-metal contact
• Nonlinear distortion
• Passive intermodulation
• Scattering

Passive intermodulation (PIM) has gradually become a serious electromagnetic interference due to the development of high-power and high-sensitivity RF/microwave communication systems, especially large deployable mesh reflector antennas. This paper proposes a field-circuit coupling method to analyze the PIM level of mesh reflectors. With the existence of many metalmetal (MM) contacts in mesh reflectors, the contact nonlinearity becomes the main reason for PIM generation. To analyze these potential PIM sources, an equivalent circuit model including nonlinear components is constructed to model a single MM contact so that the transient current through the MM contact point induced by incident electromagnetic waves can be calculated. Taking the electric current as a new electromagnetic wave source, the far-field scattering can be obtained by the use of electromagnetic numerical methods or the communication link method. Finally, a comparison between simulation and experimental results is illustrated to verify the validity of the proposed method.

• 出版日期2014-8
• 单位西安电子科技大学; 西安空间无线电技术研究所