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Radio Technology Enables NASA’s Satellite Communications
By mobile | January 29, 2008
SDR-3000 subsystems
Spectrum Signal Processing
Burnaby, BC, Canada
604-421-5422
www.spectrumsignal.com
The Cross Link Integrated Development Environment (CLIDE) program at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbclt, MD, will develop inter-satellite cross links, or communication links between satellites, enabling lower-cost constellations of satellites to provide scientific data. These direct satellite-to-satellite links allow for mesh connectivity and ad hoc networking, ensuring that a satellite communications network can provide full coverage of the earth.
To enable satellite communication, scientists used the SDR-3000 software-defined radio subsystems, based on the CompactPCI platform. The CLIDE environment required hardware that could be used to modulate and demodulate a 6-MHz bandwidth QPSK (Quadrature Phase Shift Keying) data channel in order to simulate satellite-to-satellite links. The QPSK waveform had to be capable of demodulating a test data stream with no bit errors.
Multiple SDR-3000s are slated to be used to simulate spacecraft in the lab and to demonstrate communications networking capabilities, including the inter-satellite cross links.
Topics: Radio Communication |
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