Advanced Design of Microwave Devices for Space Applications - A Tribute to Prof. John Bandler

Shortly after the author joined COM DEV in 1993 at Cambridge, Ontario, Canada, he started working on advanced microwave design problems using Prof. John Bandler’s techniques. This paper summarizes some of the previously published advanced optimization techniques used at COM DEV (now part of Honeywell) over the past 30 years for the design of microwave devices used in satellite systems, such as output multiplexers and switches. They are essential components of satellite systems and considered large scale microwave devices since they have many parameters. It is very time consuming to simulate using electromagnetic simulators. As a true tribute to Prof. John Bandler’s legacy, Space Mapping optimization has been used to design large-scale problems and it has significantly reduced the overall design and tuning time compared to traditional techniques. Excellent RF performance in the C-band and Ku-band has been obtained in a few iterations. The author also got to know Prof. Bandler through this process and benefited from his wisdom. His last visit to Prof. Bandler was in August 2023, when he thanked Prof. Bandler for the help of his career. Prof. Bandler passed away shortly after that visit.