Q-band beacon receiver for Alphasat TDP#5 propagation experiment

Abstract

In this paper we propose a specific beacon receiver structure for the Alphasat TDP#5 Q/Ka band propagation experiment. The main goal of the experiment is to refine the existing propagation models based on the received data from several different geographical locations over Europe, and also to propose new ground station structures for the experimenter's community. The specialty of our receiver that it is composed from the key elements of terrestrial point to point microwave radios, tailored to the requirements of the beacon receiver. In our paper the hardware elements, the real-time data processing capabilities and preliminary received time series will be demonstrated.