This paper proposes an analytical method to design septum-type polarizers by assuming a polarizer as a series of four septum elements with a short ridge-waveguide approximation. We determine parameters of respective elements in such a manner that, at the center frequency, the reflection coefficient of the first element is equal to that of the second one, the reflection of the third one equals to that of the forth, and the electrical lengths of the first, second and third elements are 90 deg. We name this method the Short Ridge-waveguide Approximation Method (SRAM). We fabricated an X-band polarizer, which achieves a cross polarization discrimination (XPD) value of 40.7-64.1 dB over 8.0-8.4 GHz, without any numerical optimization.

This paper reports our new communication components and downlink tests for realizing 2.65Gbps by utilizing two circular polarizations. We have developed an on-board X-band transmitter, an on-board dual circularly polarized-wave antenna, and a ground station. In the on-board transmitter, we optimized the bias conditions of GaN High Power Amplifier (HPA) to linearize AM-AM performance. We have also designed and fabricated a dual circularly polarized-wave antenna for low-crosstalk polarization multiplexing. The antenna is composed of a corrugated horn antenna and a septum-type polarizer. The antenna achieves Cross Polarization Discrimination (XPD) of 37-43dB in the target X-band. We also modify an existing 10m ground station antenna by replacing its primary radiator and adding a polarizer. We put the polarizer and Low Noise Amplifiers (LNAs) in a cryogenic chamber to reduce thermal noise. Total system noise temperature of the antenna is 58K (maximum) for 18K physical temperature when the angle of elevation is 90° on a fine winter day. The dual circularly polarized-wave ground station antenna has 39.0dB/K of Gain - system-noise Temperature ratio (G/T) and an XPD higher than 37dB. The downlinked signals are stored in a data recorder at the antenna site. Afterwards, we decoded the signals by using our non-real-time software demodulator. Our system has high frequency efficiency with a roll-off factor α=0.05 and polarization multiplexing of 64APSK. The communication bits per hertz corresponds to 8.41bit/Hz (2.65Gbit/315MHz). The system is demonstrated in orbit on board the RAPid Innovative payload demonstration Satellite (RAPIS-1). RAPIS-1 was launched from Uchinoura Space Center on January 19th, 2019. We decoded 1010 bits of downlinked R- and L-channel signals and found that the downlinked binary data was error free. Consequently, we have achieved 2.65Gbps communication speed in the X-band for earth observation satellites at 300 Mega symbols per second (Msps) and polarization multiplexing of 64APSK (coding rate: 4/5) for right- and left-hand circular polarizations.