Active Air Cooling Studies for High-Power Multi-Disk Faraday Rotators

As the number of space objects increases and their sizes decrease, there is a growing need for improved spatial resolution and sensitivity in radar systems for Space Situational Awareness (SSA) to protect critical space infrastructure. Higher power levels are required to enhance signal sensitivity, while resolution scales with bandwidth, which is more readily achievable at higher frequencies. These factors pose various challanges in the development of space radar systems. In the case of a monostatic radar such as the Tracking and Imaging Radar (TIRA) at Fraunhofer FHR, a quasi-optical duplexer in the Ka band has to be implemented. Particular attention is given to the key component of this duplexer, a so-called Faraday rotator, with a focus on high power handling and effective cooling. This contribution investigates active air cooling for the novel multi-disk Faraday rotator approach. Preliminary measurement results with a test setup are presented here, compared to first simulation results for an analogous multi-disk model. The measurements aim to validate the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) model in Ansys Fluent and to explore the potential active air cooling performance for even higher power levels.