Pleiades

Status

Completed
Status date

2016-09-12

Objectives

These physical layer developments finally lead to a series of new products, mainly MDM6000, MCD6000 and NOP1760.

MDM6000 is a modem which is capable of handling the ‘S2 Extensions’ and the Mx-DMA HRC physical layer .

The MCD6000 is a multi-carrier demodulator which supports both Mx-DMA HRC and S2 Extensions . Both MDM6000 and MCD6000 are supported by a NOP1760 traffic shaper / encapsulator device for control plane, layer 2 traffic processing as well as higher layer protocols support

These devices have been integrated into a complete solution, the HUB6000 - an evolution of the EL501 Elevation hub – and as part of the Newtec VSAT system solution (DIALOG system).

Based on these products a technology demonstrator was developed and used to demonstrate the key characteristics of the technology over satellite.

Challenges

Multiple challenges have to be resolved within the frame of this project. Amongst others, the most important to mention are:

A new demodulator board with the proper performance to handle wide band and high throughput needs will be
designed, developed and validated.
The Mx-DMA HRC physical layer requires timing and synchronisation mechanism to resolve uncertainties between the devices on the hub to be resolved.
Many (tens to hundreds) new MODCODs for the S2 Extensions and for Mx-DMA HRC have to be developed, validated and tested.
A tailored decoder for the new modulation schemes needs to be designed, developed, integrated and validated.
A decent optimization algorithm (AUPC / ACM) which takes all new MODCODs into account needs to be developed to optimize the satellite link in all conditions.
The traffic plane and the different encapsulation steps need to be defined and partitioned such that the implementation is well balanced over the different devices in terms of processing power.
Based on an existing framework, the management, control and alarm interfaces need to be adapted to the new features of the new products.
The equipment practice (mechanical integration, environmental qualification and product certification) needs to be tackled for the new products.

The new devices need to be prepared for production (Design For Manufacturing) and the production environment need to be adapted (Design For Test) for the new products. This process needs to be validated with First-Off samples

Benefits

The picture below depicts the spectral efficiency in bps/Hz as a function of Carrier to Noise Ratio for DVB-S, DVB-S2 and the Newtec S2 Extensions.

It is clear that the S2 Extensions are much closer to the Shannon limit – for every C/N value. Especially when used in conjunction with ACM and AUPC this results in a considerable efficiency increase. Potentially a high number of the current DVB-S and DVB-S2 users can benefit from the Newtec S2 Extensions.

The Mx-DMA HRC physical layer developments result in high efficiency improvements compared to traditional MF-TDMA based VSAT systems when considering multiple users per terminal as in typical small office business applications.

The Mx-DMA HRC physical layer technology will broaden the target application areas of both Sat3Play™ and Elevation™ products.

Features

The devices are intended to be used in the hub of a satellite star (point to multipoint) network and as remote terminals.

The forward traffic plane supports IPv4 packets that are GSE (Generic Stream Encapsulation, see ETSI TS 102 606)) encapsulated and modulated for transmission over satellite towards remote terminals.

The forward link can use all standard DVB-S2 and the new Newtec proprietary S2 Extensions modulation and coding combinations in CCM, VCM or ACM mode (Constant, Variable or Adaptive Coding and Modulation).

This is complemented with proprietary signalling information to control/configure the Mx-DMA HRC return link physical layer.

The return traffic plane also supports GSE encapsulated IPv4 packets. The return links can use DVB-S2, S2 Extensions or Mx-DMA HRC.

The NOP1760 incorporates a DVB-S2 ACM controller and a Mx-DMA HRC physical layer controller. The Mx-DMA HRC physical layer controller supports bandwidth allocation (carrier frequency and symbol rate), ACM and Automated Uplink Power Control (AUPC) of the return channels.

The NOP1760 can receive feedback (over the satellite return link) about receive conditions in the terminal in order to optimize the power level of the forward transmit chain or the modulation/coding parameters of the link (AUPC, ACM, etc.) and select carrier frequency and symbol rate.

The NOP1760 also supports advanced traffic classification rules. These hierarchical rules can recognize traffic using Layer 2,Layer 3 and Layer 4 information of each packet to configure advanced QoS behaviour of the traffic.

Plan

The S2 Extensions and the MX-DMA HRC physical layer developments are quite independent from each other such that these developments have been executed in parallel.

The S2 Extensions modem MDM6000 has been deployed in point-to-point networks without an overall system configuration. The S2 Extensions are beneficial and commercially relevant in the context of MDM6000 modem product and have been released to the general public.

It also includes the release of the MCD6000 S2 Extensions version.

Reference is made to the Newtec website - http://www.newtec.eu - for relevant information about the MDM6000, MCD6000, NOP1760 and HUB6000 products.

Both S2 Extensions and Mx-DMA HRC physical layer have also been integrated in the overall DIALOG system.

http://www.newtec.eu/technology/mx-dma

http://www.newtec.eu/technology/hrc

http://www.newtec.eu/article/whitepaper/white-paper-newtec-dialog

http://www.newtec.eu/product/mdm6000-satellite-modem

http://www.newtec.eu/product/hub6000

http://www.newtec.eu/product/nop1700-bandwidth-manager-and-shaper-softw…

Current status

The project has been completed and passed the final review mid 2014.

MDM6000, MCD6000 and NOP1760 have been released to the market.

The Mx-DMA HRC has been successfully operated over satellite capacity, clearly demonstrating its new efficiency benefits.

The Mx-DMA HRC building blocks realised in this project have been integrated into the new DIALOG system.

Based on speed records in multiple field trials and the Newtec vision on proposed performance improvements for the DVB-S2 standard, the MDM6000 product already won the Vision Award ‘Most Innovative Product of the Year’ at SATCON 2012.

Additionally the S2 Extensions have been ported to the M6100 Broadcast Satellite Modulator for which Newtec has won the WTA Teleport Technology of the Year Award at the SATELLITE 2013 Washington Conference. See http://newtec.eu/products/m6100 for more details.