Scott Nicholas
Norsat International has secured orders for 24 compact solid-state power amplifiers worth $3.8 million from Harris to replace the latter company’s nine large racks of legacy equipment.
Norsat said Monday it will provide an array of 100W Ku-band ATOM series SSPAs for a Harris system designed to upconvert and amplify L-band composite signals.
“Norsat and Harris have worked closely together over the past several years to develop and deliver this custom ATOM SSPA which replaced a legacy [Traveling Wave Tube Amplifier]  system,” Dewayne Barrington, Norsat program manager.
Barrington added the collaboration resulted in a smaller size and lower power consumption system designed to offer better heat dissipation and reliability.
Norsat also noted the contract builds on a previous project to customize SSPAs that works to address radio frequency linearity, flatness and phase matching performance requirements of Harris’ system.
