Satellite Communications in the New Space Era: A Survey and Future Challenges

in IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorials (2021), 23(1), 70-109

Satellite communications (SatComs) have recently entered a period of renewed interest motivated by technological advances and nurtured through private investment and ventures. The present survey aims at ... [more ▼]

Satellite communications (SatComs) have recently entered a period of renewed interest motivated by technological advances and nurtured through private investment and ventures. The present survey aims at capturing the state of the art in SatComs, while highlighting the most promising open research topics. Firstly, the main innovation drivers are motivated, such as new constellation types, on-board processing capabilities, nonterrestrial networks and space-based data collection/processing. Secondly, the most promising applications are described i.e. 5G integration, space communications, Earth observation, aeronautical and maritime tracking and communication. Subsequently, an in-depth literature review is provided across five axes: i) system aspects, ii) air interface, iii) medium access, iv) networking, v) testbeds & prototyping. Finally, a number of future challenges and the respective open research topics are described. [less ▲]

SDR IMPLEMENTATION OF A TESTBED FOR SYNCHRONIZATION OF COHERENT DISTRIBUTED REMOTE SENSING SYSTEMS

in Proceedings of IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium 2020 (2020, September 26)

Remote Sensing from distributed platforms has become attractive for the community in the last years. Phase, frequency, and time synchronization are a crucial requirement for many such applications as ... [more ▼]

Remote Sensing from distributed platforms has become attractive for the community in the last years. Phase, frequency, and time synchronization are a crucial requirement for many such applications as multi-static remote sensing and also for distributed beamforming for communications. The literature on the field is extensive, and in some cases, the requirements an complexity of the proposed synchronization solution may surpass the ones set by the application itself. Moreover, the synchronization solution becomes even more challenging when the nodes are flying or hovering on aerial or space platforms. In this work, we discuss the synchronization considerations for the implementation of distributed remote sensing applications. The general framework considered is based on a distributed collection of autonomous nodes that synchronize their clocks with a common reference using inter-satellite links. For this purpose, we implement a synchronization link between two nodes operating in a full-duplex fashion. The experimental testbed uses commercially available SDR platforms to emulate two satellites, two targets, and the communication channel. The proposal is evaluated considering phase and frequency errors for different system parameters. [less ▲]

Hardware Precoding Demonstration in Multi-Beam UHTS Communications under Realistic Payload Characteristics

in Proceedings of the 37th International Communications Satellite Systems Conference (2019, November 01)

In this paper, we present a new hardware test-bed to demonstrate closed-loop precoded communications for interference mitigation in multi-beam ultra high throughput satellite systems under realistic ... [more ▼]

In this paper, we present a new hardware test-bed to demonstrate closed-loop precoded communications for interference mitigation in multi-beam ultra high throughput satellite systems under realistic payload and channel impairments. We build the test-bed to demonstrate a real-time channel aided precoded transmission under realistic conditions such as the power constraints and satellite-payload non-linearities. We develop a scalable architecture of an SDR platform with the DVB-S2X piloting. The SDR platform consists of two parts: analog-to-digital (ADC) and digital-to-analog (DAC) converters preceded by radio frequency (RF) front-end and Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) backend. The former introduces realistic impairments in the transmission chain such as carrier frequency and phase misalignments, quantization noise of multichannel ADC and DAC and non-linearities of RF components. It allows evaluating the performance of the precoded transmission in a more realistic environment rather than using only numerical simulations. We benchmark the performance of the communication standard in realistic channel scenarios, evaluate received signal SNR, and measure the actual channel throughput using LDPC codes. [less ▲]

Real-time Radio Frequency Interference Detection and Mitigation with the Front-End GNSS Interference eXcisor (FENIX)

Scientific Conference (2019, September 26)

The number of applications based on Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) has been increasing in the last years. With its proliferation, Radio-Frequency Interference (RFI) has become one of the most ... [more ▼]

The number of applications based on Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) has been increasing in the last years. With its proliferation, Radio-Frequency Interference (RFI) has become one of the most concerning topics on GNSS-based devices for navigation, positioning and timing, but also for Earth Observation purposes such as GNSS-Reflectometry (GNSS-R) and GNSS-Radio Occultations (GNSS-RO) due to the corruption of the received signal and the corresponding geophysical measurements. The Front-End GNSS Interference eXcisor (FENIX) mitigates the problem of RFI by providing a plug-and-play solution which, placed between the antenna and the receiver, excises virtually any kind of interference signal, as its mitigation algorithm is agnostic on the particular type of RFI. The new version of FENIX is also capable of operating with large signal bandwidths ($\sim$50 MHz) and dual-band applications (e.g. L1 + L2 or L1/E1 + L5/E5). This paper shows the performance of the system for commercial GNSS receivers and GNSS-R applications. The use of FENIX in Microwave Radiometers is also possible, but it is out of the scope of this paper. [less ▲]

Demonstrator of Precoding Technique for a Multi-Beams Satellite System

in 2019 8th International Workshop on Tracking, Telemetry and Command Systems for Space Applications (TTC) (2019)