Satellite mobile communication and radio positioning systemplanning aspects

System aspects of mobile communication and position determination by satellite are described. Topics of discussion are the choice of frequency, type of modulation/multiple access and system design, and considering the effects of active and passive intermodulation and multipath interference. Communication performance and position determination analyses are conducted with respect to small-scale domestic mobile communication systems, where the satellite mobile transponder constitutes only a fraction of the otherwise fixed services C-band or Ku-band payload, and where the orbit position of the spare satellite(s) is dictated by considerations other than purely radio positioning. The system tradeoffs and arguments presented lead to a particular modulation/multiple access system, which provides high channel capacity, good ranging accuracy, and high resistance to multipath fading     

30/20 GHz Band Small Earth Station for ISSDN Experiment

The system design and operational results of a 30/20 GHz band small Earth station for integrated services satellite digital network (ISSDN) experiments are presented. The Earth station has a high efficiency offset Cassegrain antenna with elliptical beam, a high power klystron amplifier with 1 kW output power and an uncooled parametric low noise amplifier with 200 K noise temperature. Experiments were performed using the medium capacity communications satellite for experimental purposes (CS). Performance on the Earth station was high. Effective radiation power (ERP) was greater than 88.1 dBW, and the receiving figure of merit (G/T) was larger than 30.6 dB/K. Good transmission characteristics were obtained through the satellite link for demand assigned time-division multiple access (DA-TDMA) with 20 Mbit/s bit rate.     

Satellite Communication System Using TDM and SSMA

An outline and the multiple access techniques used in a domestic satellite communications system accommodating numerous small Earth stations are presented. Two kinds of Earth stations are employed in this system, a small Earth terminal (SET) and a master Earth station (MES). Forty-eight two-way satellite channels were achieved in the 6/4 GHz bands with a transponder eirp of about 62 dBm. Time division multiplex is employed in the MES to SET link and spread spectrum multiple access in the SET to MES link.     

Adaptive suppression of passive intermodulation in digital satellite transceivers

For the performance issues of satellite transceivers suffering passive intermodulation interference,a novel and effective digital suppression algorithm is presented in this paper.In con trast to analog approaches,digital passive intermodulation (PIM) suppression approaches can be easily reconfigured and therefore are highly attractive for future satellite communication systems.A simplified model of nonlinear distortion from passive microwave devices is established in consid eration of the memory effect.The multiple high-order PIM products falling into the receiving band can be described as a bilinear predictor function.A suppression algorithm based on a bilinear poly nomial decorrelated adaptive filter is proposed for baseband digital signal processing.In consideration of the time-varying characteristics of passive intermodulation,this algorithm can achieve the rapidness of online interference estimation and low complexity with less consumption of resources.Numerical simulation results show that the algorithm can effectively compensate the passive intermodulation interference,and achieve a high signal-to-interference ratio gain.     

Real Time Satellite Position Determination for TDMA Systems

A real time satellite position determination method using a single reference station is presented. The satellite position is determined from these three parameters: the distance between the reference station and the satellite that can be obtained by a single-hop measurement, the elevation angle, and the azimuth angle obtained from the antenna encoder. The error of the transmit frame delay is determined from the position equations, together with other possible errors. The accuracy is about ± 42 symbols for a 90 Mbit/s timedivision multiple access (TDMA) system using an encoder with a ± 0.001 ? resolution.     

DBV-RCS中一种提高时延性能的时隙分配方法(英文)

在DVB-RCS卫星通信中,为某个业务分配的时隙在MF-TDMA帧中的位置分布将影响该业务的时延特性。本文分别针对固定速率和实时可变速率业务,对MF-TDMA的帧长度、终端分配的时隙数量及位置分布与业务时延性能之间的关系进行了建模分析。理论分析表明时隙位置是影响业务时延的一个重要因素,位置分布越均匀,越能提高业务的时延性能;时隙均匀分配相比传统的时隙连续分配可以有效降低业务平均时延,且时延不随帧长的变化而变化;在时隙均匀分配方式下,提高实时可变速率业务的带宽分配可以更有效的提高时延性能。在DVB-RCS标准基础上,提出了一种与标准完全兼容的时隙均匀分配方法(TUAM),通过计算机仿真验证了算法的有效性以及建模分析的正确性,该算法可有效地保证业务具有极低的平均时延和时延抖动,使得VoIP等实时业务不会由于端到端时延过大而丢包,提高了DVB-RCS系统对于实时业务QoS的保障能力。     

TDRSS Telecommunications Payload: An Overview

The telecommunications payload is described for the tracking and data relay satellite system (TDRSS). The salient design features of the electronic equipment, as well as the performance requirements that such equipment must satisfy to fulfill NASA and Western Union communication functions are presented. Operational characteristics associated with the single and multiple access channels used to relay information to and from users are also highlighted.     

Distributive Demand-Assigned Packet Switching with Trailer Transmissions

In a packet satellite system using ALOHA type random access techniques, channels and on-board processing may be effectively used to provide significant gains in throughput, delay, and bandwidth efficiency. Motivated by this conjecture, a distributive demand-assigned packet broadcast system through a processing satellite with multiple request channels and user buffers is first presented. This scheme is shown to be able to achieve the above goals except, as any other demand type scheme, it also exhibits relatively poor delay performance at low traffic when compared with pure random access schemes. An extended scheme using trailer transmission to improve delay performance at low traffic is then introduced. Two techniques for handling trailer transmissions are studied and compared. Both are shown to provide lower packet delay at light trafric. lay at light traffic.     

全球卫星导航星座网络协议体系与运行模式

针对全球卫星导航星座网络建设初期或论证阶段所涉及的网络体系结构、协议体系及相关组网等技术问题,开展了基于导航星座星间链路构建空间信息网络的技术研究,分别提出了由子网、接入网、骨干网等节点及其相互之间星间、星地无线链路构成的分层网络系统结构,设计了兼容遥控、遥测、测量与网络交互支持等业务的基于IP over CCSDS(基于空间数据系统咨询委员会标准的空间链路承载互联网协议业务)的协议体系,给出了全系统基本通信业务运行模式等。与传统高轨卫星通信系统相比,该星座网络具有高覆盖、低时延、随遇接入等优点,可实现星座导航性能与中低轨及地面用户通信性能的全方位提升,相关结果对我国全球卫星导航星座网络技术研究具有一定的参考意义。     

下一代数据中继卫星系统发展思考

通过系统阐述中继卫星系统的发展过程,给出了主要国家和组织的中继卫星系统技术体制和现状.再结合卫星、载人航天器和深空探索的未来发展趋势,分析了下一代中继卫星系统的发展需求.在此基础上,从体系结构、卫星平台、链路调制体制、网络协议等方面,探讨并给出了下一代中继卫星系统的发展趋势和技术途径.为满足未来近地、深空航天任务,以及临近、低空快速移动用户的不同要求,节约系统成本,下一代中继卫星系统将向专业化和与其他系统融合的方向发展:星间链路将增加激光链路,数据速率可达到10 Gbit/s以上;多址业务成为主用,同时支持用户数能力将极大提高;对于链路调制体制,在采用CR(Cognitive Radio,认知无线电)和SDR(Software Defined Radio,软件定义无线电)技术的基础上,可实现实时自适应调整和根据需求加载配置;数据传输将采用网络化方式,天地间构成一体化DTN(Delay Tolerant Network,容延迟网络).     

Small satellite access of the Space Network

Small satellites have been perceived as having limited access to NASA's Space Network (SN). The potential for satellite access of the Space Network when the design utilizes a fixed antenna configuration and low-power, coded transmission is analyzed. From the analysis, satellites using this configuration in high-inclination orbits are shown to have a daily data throughput in the 100 to 1000 Mbit range using the multiple access communications service     

14.5-14.8 GHz Frequency Sharing by Data Relay Satellite Uplinks and Broadcasting-Satellite Uplinks

Data relay satellites are being developed to provide real-time data links between research satellites in low earth orbits and central data acquisition and processing facilities. Frequency assignments for data relay satellite links will be made in bands allocated internationally to the space research service. One of the bands which will be used lies between 14.5 and 15.35 GHz, where the space research service has had a frequency allocation as a secondary service since 1971. During the General World Administrative Radio Conference of the International Telecommunication Union, held in Geneva in 1979, a primary frequency allocation was made in the band 14.5-14.8 GHz to the fixed-satellite service, specifically for use by earth-to-space links of the broadcasting satellite service. The feasibility of shared band operation is evaluated between data relay satellite uplinks and broadcasting-satellite feeder links in the band 14.5-14.8 GHz. Relationships for predicting interference power levels are formulated, as functions of satellite separation and of earth station separation. Tradeoffs between satellite separation angle and earth station separation are explored, and conclusions are drawn regarding the feasibility of band sharing. Co-channel operation is demonstrated to be technically feasible for typical systems, provided appropriate separations are maintained.     

A Methodology for Computing Link Availability

An efficient and systematic numerical technique is presented for predicting availability of an RF link between a ground station and a communication satellite. This new methodology takes into account the effects of weather and time-varying link geometry caused by satellite motion as well as the customary ground/satellite link parameters. The availability computed under the worst link geometry (5 deg elevation) has been compared with the average availability computed with the new methodology. The results indicate that the traditional worst-case design approach is too pessimistic to provide a realistic design criterion where links operate at K band or above.     

Performance evaluation of digital beamforming strategies for satellite communications

Smart antennas are becoming one of the promising technologies to meet the rapidly increasing demands for more capacity of satellite communication systems. A main component in a smart antenna system is beamforming. Because of the limitations of analog beamforming, digital beamforming will be employed in future satellite communication systems. We evaluate the performance of various digital beamforming strategies proposed in the literature for satellite communications: 1) single fixed beam/single user, 2) single fixed beam/multiple users, 3) single adaptive beam/single user, and 4) single Chebyshev dynamic beam/multiple users. Multiple criteria including coverage, system capacity, signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR), and computation complexity are used to evaluate these satellite communication beamforming strategies. In particular, a Ka-band satellite communication system is used to address the various issues of these beamforming strategies. For the adaptive beamforming approach, subarray structure is used to obtain the weights of a large 2D antenna array, and a globally convergent recurrent neural network (RNN) is proposed to realize the adaptive beamforming algorithm in parallel. The new subarray-based neural beamforming algorithm can reduce the computation complexity greatly, and is more effective than the conventional least mean square (LMS) beamforming approach. It is shown that the single adaptive beam/single user approach has the highest system capacity.     

TP-Satellite: A New Transport Protocol for Satellite IP Networks

As a result of the exponential growth of the worldwide Internet, satellite systems are used to support broadband Internet access. Existing TCP protocols perform very well for Internet access on wired networks. However, in the case of satellite channels, due to the effects of high bandwidth asymmetry, long propagation delay, high sporadic bit error rate (BER) and burst errors, TCP performance degrades significantly. In this paper, a new end-to-end transport protocol, TP-Satellite, is proposed for satellite IP networks. TP-Satellite replaces the traditional slow start algorithm with a novel super start algorithm. In order to distinguish congestion events from link errors, a new scheme is introduced, which is based on alternate transmission of different class priority packets. Bandwidth asymmetry problems are addressed by the adoption of a modified negative acknowledgement (M-NACK) strategy, which periodically sends M-NACK packets. Simulation results show that TP-Satellite enhances the throughput performance on the forward path, reduces the bandwidth used in the reverse path, and offers a fair share of network resources.     

基于遗传算法的太阳同步轨道组网访问序列优化

针对考虑回归周期、重访周期及地面站接收数据冲突等多约束条件下太阳同步回归轨道多星组网问题,开展了基于遗传算法的组网优化研究。通过分析太阳同步回归轨道运动特性与星下点的关系,构造了回归周期内轨道的访问序列,建立了卫星半长轴、相位差与太阳同步回归轨道的关系;结合组网卫星有效载荷指标参数,分析了回归周期、重访周期与访问序列的关系及极值;将组网卫星的访问序列作为优化参数,采用二进制编码方式建立综合适应度函数;设计了遗传算子并通过种群繁殖得到优化结果。仿真结果表明,该方法能够快速设计出满足约束条件的组网优化策略。     

Optical fiber geostationary tether satellite (F-GTS) system design

The geostationary satellite orbit (GSO) is a limited natural resource and its efficient utilization is very important. The geostationary tether satellite (GTS) system has a number of satellites aligned along the local vertical on either side of the nominal geostationary position. The system is synchronized with the Earth's rotation and all the various altitudes are geostationary, Furthermore, optical-fiber geostationary tether satellite (F-GTS) system has been introduced to improve the GTS system, with regard to increment of communication capacity, simplification of interference paths and intersatellite link (ISL) capability. The F-GTS system design is discussed with the purpose of achieving a realistic satellite network. Three frequency bands, i.e., the 14/11, 30/20, and 50/40 GHz bands, are examined for selection of the optimum frequency band. The F-GTS system example for covering the service areas in Japan is discussed with regard to satellite antenna diameter, communication capacities, etc. To apply the F-GTS system to the whole GSO, the diagonal azimuth orbit arrangement method is proposed for low latitude service areas. Moreover, the F-GTS communication capacity and total communication capacity, when the F-GTS systems are applied to the whole GSO, are also examined.     

Performance improvement for constellation SAR using signal processing techniques

A new concept of spaceborne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) implementation has recently been proposed - the constellation of small spaceborne SAR systems. In this implementation, several formation-flying small satellites cooperate to perform multiple space missions. We investigate the possibility to produce high-resolution wide-area SAR images and fine ground moving-target indicator (GMTI) performance with constellation of small spaceborne SAR systems. In particular, we focus on the problems introduced by this particular SAR system, such as Doppler ambiguities, high sparseness of the satellite array, and array element errors. A space-time adaptive processing (STAP) approach combined with conventional SAR imaging algorithms is proposed which can solve these problems to some extent. The main idea of the approach is to use a STAP-based method to properly overcome the aliasing effect caused by the lower pulse-repetition frequency (PRF) and thereby retrieve the unambiguous azimuth wide (full) spectrum signals from the received echoes. Following this operation, conventional SAR data processing tools can be applied to focus the SAR images fully. The proposed approach can simultaneously achieve both high-resolution SAR mapping of wide ground scenes and GMTI with high efficiency. To obtain array element errors, an array auto-calibration technique is proposed to estimate them based on the angular and Doppler ambiguity analysis of the clutter echo. The optimizing of satellite formations is also analyzed, and a platform velocity/PRF criterion for array configurations is presented. An approach is given to make it possible that almost any given sparse array configuration can satisfy the criterion by slightly adjusting the PRF. Simulated results are presented to verify the effectiveness of the proposed approaches.