Advantech’s 150/200/250 Watt Ku-band Rackmount SapphireBlu SSPA with GaN technology. Photo: Advantech Wireless

[Via Satellite 06-19-2014] Advantech Wireless was selected by Casablanca Online, a satellite digital transmission provider in Brazil, to support live transmissions of the 2014 FIFA World Cup with its 400 Watt C-band and 200 Watt Ku-Band SapphireBlu series of UltraLinear Gallium Nitride (GaN) technology-based High Power Amplifiers (HPAs).

With the SapphireBlu HPAs, it’s possible to saturate all transponders of a satellite with a single 13-meter antenna and a single amplifier per polarization. These new systems are redundant-ready and don’t require an extra controller. This new architecture is optimized for Multi-Carrier operations, but can also be used for Single Carrier and Multi-Transponder uplinking. Power is expandable from 200 Watts to 6.6 kW in C-band and 3kW in Ku-band by phase combining and soft fail philosophy.