PAGE CONTENTS
Objectives
The main objective of this activity was to explore new types of OGBF techniques and architectures which can be useful, over the long term, for a large spectrum of applications.
The study was mainly aimed at pinpointing the technical and economic benefits of OGBF-based solutions and at providing a roadmap for the technology implementation.
The key aspects addressed by the team in this study were:
- the review of the requirements of some realistic satellite reference mission and the evaluation of their performances using conventional technologies;
- The definition of new architectures exploiting OGBF technologies for implementing the selected reference missions;
- The definition and development of a methodology and related tools for evaluating the key performances of the new (OGBF-based) systems as well as that of the reference benchmark employing conventional solutions;
- The assessment of the system performances and technical/economical viability of the proposed solutions using said methodology;
- Elaboration of a development roadmap for the proposed solutions.
Challenges
Main challenge in the project was to control the increase in complexity and cost of the GW segment. Most OGBF applications are made commercially unviable by the huge complexity increase of such segment. Also maintaining, as far as possible, compatibility with the already deployed user terminal segment is another challenge.
System Architecture
The considered system architectures were all based on the transparent (multi-)star network concept. Centralized beamforming at the GW is considered for all the scenarios for both FL and RL. Optional Multi-User detection at the GW side is also considered.
Plan
The project work started in September 2014 and was completed in June 2016.
The study logic is shown in the figure below.
Current Status
Project was completed.
