Comparison of Multipactor Analysis Methods for Galileo Signals

Multipactor breakdown is one of the design challenges and cost drivers of high power Radio frequency (RF) devices for space applications. Current RF devices are designed to be multipactor free at peak power plus an additional margin. In order to reduce this margin, a better understanding of the breakdown phenomenon for modulated signals is required. To this end, the non-stationary statistical theory of multipactor for parallel plate is extended from continuous wave (CW) and multicarrier (MC) to modulated signals. Galileo signals are analyzed with this method and compared to results obtained by multicarrier approximations and other methods available in the literature.