NTB | ESA CSC

Status

Completed
Status date

2019-08-01
Activity Code

3A.040

Objectives

The original objective of this activity was to design and develop a software-only based Testbed implementing and fully validating key functions of the DVB-RCS2 standard.

The Testbed design and implementation should provide manufacturers and researchers with a validated reference design of DVB-RCS2 sub-systems implementing key RCS2 functions. The reference design focuses on the RCS2 terminal functions. The hub functionality is emulated as required for the validation of the terminal functions.

As an extension to the original contract, the testbed is upgraded to include also the physical layer, on the forward as well as the return link.

The reference design should be made available to RCS terminal manufacturers. The project should also provide feedback on the RCS2 standard and the RCS2 Guidelines documents to the TM-RCS group.

Challenges

The RSC2 standard and RCS2 Guidelines documents had not reached stable versions at the early phases of the project. Many questions came up at the detailed level that were not yet well covered in the documents.

Also, working in a distributed environment, with different operating systems, caused additional challenges (but finally resulted in a more flexible solution).

Benefits

The Testbed is designed and implemented to provide manufacturers and researchers with a validated reference design of DVB-RCS2 sub-systems implementing key functions. The reference design mainly focuses on the RCS2 terminal functions.

The test bed allows validation of the DVB-RCS2 protocol and functionality, including real-time operation.

One of the major outputs of the project is a DVB-RCS2 terminal reference design covering higher layers and lower layers, and after phase 2 also includes the physical layer. The modular architecture allows to extract the modules of interest and use them in real terminal implementations.

Features

Provides a tool for emulating a full DVB-RCS2 system that can be used to test all the new functionalities of DVB-RCS2.
It can be operated in IP mode, with software emulating the physical layers, or after conclusion of phase 2, in PHY mode, with physical layer included.
The testbed is operated through a number of testcases, each focusing on particular RCS2 features. This provides a controlled and repeatable test environment
It is able to emulate a network with a large number of terminals (3 real + fake terminals, whose traffic is generated by the background traffic generator)
It is able to support a large number of services, because of the support of IPv4 and v6 in both unicast and multicast transmission mode

SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE

Block diagram of the DVB-RCS Next Generation Testbed

Plan

The main milestones in the project are:

Meeting, milestone	Schedule
Testbed Requirements Review	21.09.2011
Preliminary Design Review	08.12.2011
Critical Design Review	04.06.2012
Testbed Acceptance Review	06.06.2013
Final review	02.07.2013
Final Presentation	17.09.2013
Phase2:
Baseline requirements Review	19.05.2015
Preliminary Design Review	18.06.2015
Critical Design Review	15.03.2016
Acceptance Test and Final Presentation	29.05.2016