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StatusOngoing
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Status date2012-06-26
New communication and broadcasting systems use a high level of diversity to increase the service availability. For example time diversity/time interleaving offers a high gain for mobile reception, whereas diversity solves the “flat fading problem” for stationary reception. Combining the technologies requires a detailed characterisation of the propagation characteristics to evaluate the overall gain.
The channel measurement equipment (CME) is a flexible test receiver designed for multiple applications in the context of statistical analysis of the QoS and coverage of satellite and terrestrial communication systems like:
- Analysis of the QoS for mobile satellite systems (e.g. DVB-SH, ESDR, SDARS, future broadband systems),
- Verification of the coverage of terrestrial repeaters,
- Analysis of antenna subsystems in the field (e.g. antenna diversity gain, comparison of different antennas).
The key issue is to provide a flexible measurement equipment that offers a complete tool chain for:
- LMS-channel characterization
- Antenna comparison in the field
- Analysis of antenna diversity effects
- Network validation and prediction
- RF-Frontend qualification
The main benefits of CME is to offer a product that addresses all aspects of a field strength measurement based field testing campaign, from the recording of the data up to the generation of detailed analysis results, at a reasonable price.
The CME consists of 2 separate hardware units, the "Antenna Assembly" and the "CME Core" which are connected over an optical link.
Features of the Antenna Assembly:
- Simultaneous handling of up to 6 antenna signals,
- Antenna manufacturer independent RF-Input interface,
- Each of the 6 RF inputs has a high analog bandwidth of 34.67 MHz, supporting center frequencies from VHF to S-Band,
- Default tuners may be replaced by user specific hardware,
- 12 V powered equipment.
Features of the CME-Core:
- Power is measured in bandwidths of 542 kHz, with the number of available power level detectors (16 to 64) depending on the number of simultaneously measured antennas,
- Power level measurement rate is 2.116 kHz (for each of the up to 64 Sub-Bands),
- Power levels are recorded together with additional status information (e.g. tuner frequency, GPS data etc) into single file,
- Snapshot recording of baseband I/Q data (single antenna bandwidth up to 34.67 MHz, multi-antenna bandwidth up to 52 MHz) to hard disk for further analysis, e. g Channel Impulse Response (CIR),
- Connectivity for GPS Receiver,
- Comfortable real time GUI displaying power levels, spectrum, C/N and other statistics useful for field testing campaigns,
- Remote GUI software allowing full control of the CME via secure web access through the internet
- 12 V powered equipment.
Post-processing features:
- In-the-field GUI for easy data verification and initial analysis during trials,
- Detailed post-processing tool chain for advanced signal analysis.
The major milestones of the project are:
- Baseline Design Review: October 29th, 2008
- Midterm Design Review: September 17th, 2009
- Field testing and validation: November 2009 to February 2010
- Final Review: July 28th, 2010
- Final Presentation: September 9th, 2010
Tasks completed:
- Definition work
- System design
- CMEC hardware design
- AA hardware design
- Review of system and hardware design
- CMEC hardware integration
- Implementation of system-framework
- Validation of system-framework
- Integration of AA hardware (1st prototype)
- Validation of data processing subsystems (lab tests)
- First field-validation campaign
- Design of 2nd generation tuners for AA
- Integration of 2nd generation tuners for AA
- Second field-validation campaign
- Implementation of post-processing features
- EMC conformance validation