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Mobile satellite communication systems also referred to as SatCom-On-The-Move (SOTM) systems provide mobile users with communication services in a variety of environments, especially those completely lacking any fixed communications infrastructure such as maritime and aeronautical environments. SOTM systems find place in many market applications providing different types of services e.g. entertainment, rescue and military services. Antenna de-pointing and impairments of the Land Mobile Satellite (LMS) channel lead to degradation in the quality of the communication activity. Antenna de-pointing may lead to harmful interference to adjacent satellites. Regulatory authorities define limits for antenna de-pointing and for the Power Spectral Density (PSD) transmitted from the antenna. As an integral part of the development of SOTM systems, a demonstration of the system performance in terms of tracking capabilities is carried out. Such tests and demonstrations are usually perf ormed in a field test where two or more operational satellites are involved. This contribution proposes a test method which avoids the employment of operational satellites and offers a reliable and repeatable environment for measuring the overall SOTM system performance. In particular, antenna pointing errors can be estimated with a high degree of precision. The pointing estimation accuracy performance of the proposed method is compared to the performance of the field test methods

This paper discusses the advances and measurement results of a far field test range for SatCom On-the-Move terminals in Ilmenau, Germany. The test range can be operated in Ku and Ka-band, offering a complete emulation of the conditions typically met by a SOTM terminal. Various real-world motion profiles for the Land Mobile and Maritime environment are available for mobile terminal testing. These motion profiles are obtained from a comprehensive database that was designed and populated during an ESA ARTES-S.l activity. The described far field range offers repeatable and controllable test conditions, that allow for a fair comparison of different systems.Three different SOTM terminals were tested in Ku-band. The results of these measurements will be compared w.r.t. resynchronization behavior, pointing accuracy and EIRP mask conformity of all systems under test.

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