Feasibility study of a Ka-/Ka-band dichroic plate with stepped rectangular apertures

For the Cassini spacecraft mission, a dichroic plate is needed to pass Ka-band uplink (34.2 to 34.7 GHz) and to reflect Ka-band downlink (31.8 to 32.3 GHz) for dual-frequency operation in the Deep Space Network. The special characteristic of the Ka-/Ka-band dichroic plate is that the pass band and the reflective band are only 1.9 GHz (5.7 percent) apart. A thick dichroic plate with stepped rectangular apertures that function as resonator filters was chosen for the Ka-/Ka-band dichroic plate design. The results of the feasibility study are presented in this article.