Combined beacon and noise satellite propagation measurements using software defined radio

Considering the imminent migration of services to the Ka- and Q-bands, a payload dedicated to propagation measurements in these bands has become available from the Alphasat satellite under the coordination of the European Space Agency. This has strongly motivated the formation of many measurement ca...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in2017 11th European Conference on Antennas and Propagation (EUCAP) pp. 2356 - 2360
Main Authors Papafragkakis, A. Z., Panagopoulos, A. D., Ventouras, S.
Format Conference Proceeding
LanguageEnglish
Published Euraap 01.03.2017
Subjects
Alphasat
Antenna measurements
Atmospheric measurements
atmospheric phenomena
Attenuation
beacon
campaign
Fast Fourier Transform
measurements
noise
Noise measurement
preprocessing
propagation
radiometer
Radiometry
Receivers
satellite
Software Defined Radio
Temperature measurement
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Summary:Considering the imminent migration of services to the Ka- and Q-bands, a payload dedicated to propagation measurements in these bands has become available from the Alphasat satellite under the coordination of the European Space Agency. This has strongly motivated the formation of many measurement campaigns across Europe in an effort to enhance the scientific databases with new, more reliable propagation data. In the framework of our campaign at the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) in Greece two identical beacon receivers targeting the Alphasat's Ka-band beacon were designed and deployed; these receivers make use of the relatively new Software Defined Radio (SDR) paradigm. Apart from the beacon measurements themselves, additional noise measurements are performed to supplement the campaign. The present paper constitutes an attempt to outline the characteristics and associated advantages of this methodology over the conventional techniques.
DOI:10.23919/EuCAP.2017.7928502