Description
The objective is to develop an engineering model of a low power and miniaturised modulator and demodulator (modem) achieving a giga symbol per second (GSps) data transmission rate to enable short range inter-satellite links (ISL) on board small-to-medium platforms.
Targeted Improvements: Increase the inter satellite link capacity from mega symbol per second to GSps, i.e. beyond 1GSps for a single channel.
Description:
Future non-geostationary satellite constellations and geostationary relay satellites requirehigh data-rate inter-satellite-links to overcome feeder link capacity saturation and to optimise ground station deployment. Current state-of-the-art on-board modulators offer symbol rates of 500 MSps. Higher data rates are attained by optical inter-satellite links,such as those implemented in the European Data Relay System, offering up to 1.8 Gbps over long distances and 5.6 Gbps over short distances.
An alternative or complementary solution is to implement the inter-satellite links at extremely high radio frequencies, where significant bandwidth is available for this application (59 to 71 GHz), in the so-called V-band. At these frequencies, antenna miniaturisation as well as high data rates can be achieved. Although Q/V band (40/50 GHz) is becoming a commercial reality for high throughput satellite feeder link applications, technology exploiting the inter-satellite link V-band frequency range remains to be developed.
This activity will explore different technologies and topologies for the implementation of an ISL modem enabling the exploitation of the ISL frequency allocation in V-band (59 - 71 GHz). The modem shall be an engineering model (TRL 5) with very wideband transmit and receive capabilities (a few GHz) and extremely high data rates (a few GSps) by implementing advanced coding and modulation waveforms.
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