Small and large scale site diversity experiment at Ka‐band in the south of France

Abstract

Summary Since April 2011, ONERA has been operating in Toulouse, France, a beacon receiver able to receive the 20.199 GHz beacon signal of ASTRA 3B. From June 2013 to December 2013, ONERA and CNES successively deployed in the South of France four more beacon receivers in order to characterize the space‐time behaviour of the propagation channel at Ka‐band. This Site Diversity configuration is of great interest for the development of future high data rate satellite services as it efficiently mitigates severe tropospheric propagation impairments, in particular rain attenuation which is the major issue. The ONERA‐CNES Ka‐band site diversity experiment consists of three beacon receivers deployed in the area of Toulouse with site separation between 16 and 26 km, and two additional beacon receivers at 140 km and 300 km from Toulouse. This paper aims at providing a complete description of the experimental set‐up and the statistical results of the campaign from July 2013 to December 2014. The Complementary Cumulative Distribution Functions (CCDF) of rain attenuation on each site and the Joint Distributions for several pairs of radio links are illustrated. Some comparisons of the measured Diversity Gain with two state‐of‐the‐art prediction models are also presented. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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

“…At the end of March 2011, the Ka‐band beacon receiver previously used for the HotBird 6 experiment was upgraded to benefit from the better Equivalent Isotropically Radiated Power (EIRP) of the SES ASTRA 3B Ka‐band beacon . ASTRA 3B is located on a geostationary orbit at 23.5°E of longitude.…”

“…At the end of the 90s, ONERA designed and built 2 indoor beacon receivers (20.7 and 41.4 GHz) for the Stentor propagation experiment . After the launch failure and the loss of the satellite, the 20.7‐GHz beacon receiver was modified to receive first the 19.7‐GHz Hotbird 6 beacon and second the 20.2‐GHz ASTRA 3B beacon . The Alphasat mission has given the opportunity to work at higher frequency with the Q‐band beacon of the Alphasat Aldo Paraboni Scientific payload.…”

“…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 . From mid‐2013 to end of 2014, ONERA and CNES deployed 4 other Ka‐band beacon receivers in the south of France to assess the performances of site diversity techniques .…”

“…4 In March 2011, the radio frequency chain was modified to be able to receive the 20.2-GHz ASTRA 3B beacon. 4,5 From mid-2013 to end of 2014, ONERA and CNES deployed 4 other Ka-band beacon receivers in the south of France to assess the performances of site diversity techniques. 5 Since June 2015, a Q band beacon receiver has been installed in Toulouse (co-located to the first ASTRA 3B beacon receiver) and is able to record the 39.4-GHz beacon signal of the Alphasat satellite.…”

Smart gateways switching control algorithms based on tropospheric propagation forecasts

“…To evaluate the performances of the various forecasts methods presented in the remaining of this section, and also to parameterize the models, propagation data collected in the south of France during a joint ONERA‐CNES campaign propagation measurement campaign have been used . The location of the various sites over which data have been collected is illustrated in Figure .…”