Description
The main objective of the activity is to implement an emulator to prove the functionality of beam hopping ground components and of their interaction with the payload in the end-to-end system, identifying and solving the criticalities especially related to the air interface issues. The impact of Beam Hopping on higher layer protocols shall be investigated as well.
Targeted Improvements:
- Flexibility to serve large areas and cope with non-uniform demand;
- Up to 30% increase in system throughput/capacity.
Future broadband HTS systems are evolving to provide high flexibility and capacity covering both land and maritime users. Large coverage areas and flexibility to adapt to different traffic distributions are key requirements for satellite systems to maintain their competitiveness. The capability to cope with the inherent uncertainty as well as with the spatial non-uniform distribution of the request for broadband capacity make beam hopping an attractive solution more than ever.
In beam hopping systems, the transmission is not continuous but divided in timeslots. In each timeslot, only a subset of beams is illuminated contemporaneously and the set of illuminated beams changes on a slot-by-slot basis following a repetition window, also called illumination plan. Beam hopping grants to the system an extremely large flexibility in accommodating irregular and time-variant traffic requests and provides the capability to serve a very large number of beams, when part of them requires a sporadic service.
After many studies that assessed the achievable benefits of beam hopping, this activity shall specify and implement the enabling solutions for the air interface, focusing on physical layer encapsulation and modulation issues. The emulator shall also model the propagation channel and the effects of the payload non-linearity and of beam switching. The impact of the DVB-Sx superframe structure on the encapsulation and therefore on QoS and performance shall be addressed. The requirements and solutions for the higher layer operations shall also be addressed, taking into account the inherent bursty nature of the transmission. After the assessment on the air interface issues and the identification of the solution at the higher layers, the specification of the requirements and a design of the emulator shall follow. The activity shall then implement a real-time emulator that demonstrates the applicability of Beam Hopping to a simplified satellite system scenario.
Tender Specifics