The goal is to develop an engineering model of a VDE-SAT transceiver payload, implementing full VDE-SAT support (uplink and downlink protocols as well as ASM-SAT).
The Space Based VDE Transceiver will offer full VDE-SAT functionality and is an expansion of the current Kongsberg Seatex VDES satellite products.
The Space Based VDE Transceiver is enclosed in a mechanical unit measuring 168 x 140 x 52 mm (L x W x H) with a mass of 1200 g. The payload supports multiple antenna configurations with up to 1 transmit and 4 receiver antennas. Maximum nominal output power is 33 dBm in single and multi-carrier configuration (saturated output power is 39 dBm).
The hardware design of the payload consists of two PCBs where the analog RF frontends and power supply is on an interface board, while the ADCs, FPGA and transmitter is found on a secondary transceiver board. The payload optionally supports cold redundancy using a second transceiver board.
Communication with the satellite on-board computer is through an RS-422/485 interface. SpaceWire and CAN-Bus is supported in hardware and can be added as firmware upgrades in the future.
The transmitter and receiver architecture is implemented as FPGA logic, including the turbo forward error correction (FEC) decoder/encoder. Support has been implemented for VDES waveforms LCI 4, 20-24, 31-32.
The project consists of the following phases and milestones:
The project is COMPLETED.
The main achievements of the project are: