Ka and Q band propagation experiments in Toulouse using ASTRA 3B and ALPHASAT satellites

Abstract

Summary From January 2008 to March 2011, ONERA operated in Toulouse, France, a beacon receiver able to collect the 19.7‐GHz beacon signal of the HotBird 6 satellite. In March 2011, the radio frequency chain was modified to be able to receive the 20.2‐GHz ASTRA 3B beacon to benefit from a higher Equivalent Isotropically Radiated Power of the satellite. Since June 2015, a second beacon receiver has been installed and is able to record the 39.4‐GHz beacon signal of the Alphasat satellite. The objective of this paper is to present the results of the first 2 years of measurements (June 2015 to May 2017) of the Q‐band Alphasat propagation experiment in Toulouse, as well as concurrent measurements collected at Ka‐band with ASTRA 3B. First of all, the propagation experiments are briefly described. Second, the results of the statistical analysis are highlighted. Finally, a deep analysis of the performances of the 2 frequency scaling prediction methods recommended in ITU‐R P.618‐13 is performed.

Two-Leg Deep-Space Relay Architectures: Performance, Challenges, and Perspectives

“…The atmospheric attenuation A atm ( f , ϕ, p) actually depends on a number of additional site-specific parameters at the G/S, which include the height above mean sea level, the point rainfall rate for 0.01% of an average year, the atmospheric pressure, the temperature, the water vapour density, and the total columnar content of liquid water reduced to a temperature of 273.15K. All of these parameters have been estimated for the location of European Space Agency (ESA) deep-space antenna (DSA) 1, located in New Norcia, Australia, using the data made available by ITU-R. We also acknowledge that, following ESA Alphasat mission [16], data from several propagation experiments between Alphasat's Aldo Paraboni payload and different ground stations in Europe are made available in the literature, covering two frequencies at Ka and Q bands (19.7 and 39.4GHz, respectively) [17]- [20]. These experiments report in general fairly good agreement with ITU-R models, although with different levels of matching.…”

“…The first one is a deterministic approach which considers a maximum angular error θ max (based on the available information about the pointing system). Using this value, it is possible to quantify the loss by employing, for example, (16) or (17) model. Adopting a Gaussian beam model, for given θ max we compute the maximum pointing loss per antenna as L pnt,max = e −Gθ 2 max (18) and we use it for link analysis.…”

Two-Leg Deep Space Relay Architectures: Performance, Challenges, and Perspectives

“…In all cases, the atmospheric attenuation is computed as A atm = A rain + A gas + A clouds , i.e., by including attenuation caused by rain, absorption from gases (e.g., oxygen and water vapor), and small droplets (clouds and fog), according to International Telecommunication Union-Radiocommunication (ITU-R) recommendations, e.g., [13]- [15]. The atmospheric attenuation A atm (f, ϕ, p) actually depends on a number of additional sitespecific parameters at the G/S, which include the height above mean sea level, the point rainfall rate for 0.01% of an average year, the atmospheric pressure, the temperature, the water vapour density, and the total columnar content of liquid water reduced to a temperature of 273.15 K. All of these parameters have been estimated for the location of European Space Agency (ESA) deep-space antenna (DSA) 1, located in New Norcia, Australia, using the data made available by ITU-R. We also acknowledge that, following ESA Alphasat mission [16], data from several propagation experiments between Alphasat's Aldo Paraboni payload and different ground stations in Europe are made available in the literature, covering two frequencies at Ka and Q bands (19.7 GHz and 39.4 GHz, respectively) [17]- [20]. These experiments report in general fairly good agreement with ITU-R models, although with different levels of matching.…”

Rain Attenuation Estimation with the Numerical Weather Prediction Model WRF: Impact of Rain Drop Size Distribution for a Temperate Climate

“…Within this work, the dataset of interest is the excess attenuation. The details of the processing methods used to extract the excess attenuation are in [17], [18]. At these frequencies and for time percentages lower than 1 % of an average year, the main contributor to the excess attenuation is the rain attenuation.…”

“…In that regard, Mie scattering is applied to correspond rigorously to the assumptions in the NWP output. This work is carried out over Toulouse, in a temperate zone, but where long-term beacon measurements are available concurrently at two frequencies (20.2 and 39.4 GHz) [17], [18], and for which site diversity measurements (20.2 GHz) [19] also exist. Both aspects are useful to ascertain the representativeness of the results.…”