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2016 - 2020 High-Throughput Satellite Systems on the Right Track

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2016 - 2020 High-Throughput Satellite Systems on the Right Track 2016 - 2020 High-Throughput Satellite systems on the right track Erwan Corbel, Bernard Charrat, Mathieu Dervin, Cédric Baudoin, Laurent Combelles, Benoit Garnier, Jean-Michel Mérour Thales Alenia Space {first_name.last_name}@thalesaleniaspace.com 26, avenue J.-F. Champollion, BP 1187, 31037 Toulouse France Abstract Recent studies have identified the key technologies at payload level to be developed for HTS to reach the expectations in terms of capacity / cost ratio. In particular, emphasis has been placed on the exploitation of both exclusive and non-exclusive Ka bands and the decrease of the user beam size below 0.3°. While near-term HTS will benefit from a sharing of non-exclusive Ka bands between the feeder and the user links, it is envisaged, in most capacitive scenarios, to dedicate all available Ka- band spectrum to the user downlink, namely the band 17.3 – 20.2 GHz. This feature leads to consider alternative bands for the feeder link, in particular the Q (40 GHz) and V (50 GHz) bands. The paper aims at providing a status of the roadmap of Thales Alenia Space towards such HTS systems, addressing the development of key payload subsystems, but also the availability of enhanced user terminals and the development of the Q/V-band gateway. It is shown that a step-by- step deployment of the next-generation HTS systems is on the right track. 1. Introduction Although not limited to the consumer residential market, the next generation of High-Throughput Satellite (HTS) systems will be able to deliver high-data rates to households in underserved and unserved areas. To meet a deep market penetration, HTS systems shall pursue the reduction of cost per transmitted bits with respect to the current in-orbit HTS. Even if initiatives to promote HTS using Ku band or using several frequency bands exist (see Intelsat EPIC), most of future HTS will likely rely on Ka band on the user link. Thales Alenia Space (TAS) has recently been involved in several multi-partners system-level studies on next-generation HTS, namely : “MultiMedia 2nd Generation” (CNES - French Space Agency), “Terabit/s satellite : a system study” (ESA), “Broadband Access via Integrated Terrestrial & Satellite Systems - BATS” (EU). According to these studies, the common features of next-generation HTS to come in the 2016-2020 time frame are : · High spot density with user beam size smaller than 0.3°. · Allocation of large spectrum chunks thanks to the exploitation of non-exclusive Ka bands. In Europe (ITU region 1), exclusive Ka bands offer 500 MHz of spectrum on two polarizations for both uplink and downlink, while non-exclusive bands represents more than 2 GHz in both directions. · Use of mitigation techniques on ground to cope with intra-system interference sources, most preferably located in gateways to limit the cost of the user terminal. Although all these features contribute to increase the system capacity with respect to the current generation, the trend towards very high throughputs is mainly supported by the enhanced user beam density (typically multiplied by a factor 3 to 4) and by the enlarged user bandwidth (typically multiplied by 2 to 5.8). Figure 1 presents the frequency plan under consideration in this paper, with no explicit reference to any color pattern. The full downlink Ka band suitable for civilian applications is allocated to the user link. The ratio of bandwidth between the forward and the return links is 3:1. The feeder link relies on V (50 GHz) and Q (40 GHz) bands. The design of a HTS system with the aforementioned features shall meet several technical challenges, which have been divided into three categories : user link design and associated waveforms (addressed in section 2), feeder link and network backbone sizing (in section 3) and payload equipment developments (in section 4). The following sections present these challenges and the related solutions that are currently under development. They are suitable for a wide range of coverage, from a regional coverage (30 – 60 spots) to a continental coverage (150 – 300 spots). Figure 1 : reference frequency plan. 2. User link design and associated waveforms 2.1 Regulatory context in Ka band in Europe Services in Ka band for civilian satellite communications rely on worldwide ITU allocations to the Fixed Satellite Service (FSS) in the bands 27.5 - 30 GHz and 17.3 - 20.2 GHz. The band 19.7 – 20.2 GHz and 29.5 – 30 GHz is dedicated to the exclusive primary use by FSS and it usually hosts the user segment of current Ka-band systems. In contrast, the vast majority of the Ka spectrum, i.e. 27.5 - 29.5 GHz and 17.3 - 19.7 GHz, is allocated to other primary services. Each country is free to determine the use of shared bands, either by giving priority to some of the services, or by establishing technical and regulatory co-existence conditions. The band 17.3 - 17.7 GHz is used by feeder uplink stations for satellite broadcasting systems. As per regulation, Broadcast Satellite Service (BSS) feeder stations have priority over other uses of the spectrum, and HTS terminals cannot claim protection if interference occurs. Discussions in CEPT has however shown that BSS feeder stations are limited in number, their location is known and the interference area is about a few tenth kilometers around BSS stations. Therefore, it is possible to implement a database of those stations in Europe so that a HTS system is able to avoid allocation of shared frequencies in the vicinity of these stations. The 17.7 - 19.7 GHz band is shared with mobile network operators for Fixed Service (FS) to support a significant part of the backbone of the public mobile network (2G/3G/4G). The number of fixed links in Europe is nearing 100,000 in 2014 in this band. Here again, a HTS user terminal is not entitled to claim for protection from FS. Countermeasures are preferably based on the dynamic awareness of interference levels in the vicinity of the terminal. They may rely on satellite Cognitive Radio techniques, which currently benefits from a large R&D effort, in particular in the frame of the CORASAT project (funded by EU) [2], which Thales Alenia Space is participating to. Because fixed links are highly directional, and use a moderate bandwidth (from a few MHz to about 100 MHz), it can be shown that the amount of spectrum locally usable for interference-free FSS reception is sufficient to ensure the service, provided that the carrier bandwidth is not too large. This principle is know as Dynamic Channel Assignment (DCA), and is recognized in the applicable regulatory framework in Europe. Note that CEPT is currently examining possible enhancements of this framework to facilitate the use of uncoordinated FSS Earth stations. In the band 27.5 - 29.5 GHz, CEPT has adopted a band segmentation approach between FSS uncoordinated Earth stations and fixed links. Under this regime, about 880 MHz would be available for use by HTS user terminals, in addition to the 500 MHz of the exclusive band 29.5 - 30 GHz. In particular the band 28.4445 – 29.9485 GHz is part of this segmentation. To summarize, solutions to ensure a peaceful sharing of the Ka band with FS are identified, both for the downlink and the uplink. In all cases, they rely on the preservation of the exclusive bands 19.7 - 20.2 GHz and 29.5 – 30 GHz for FSS, which are critical to guarantee the HTS system QoS. 2.2 Interference management Despite next-generation HTS systems will rely on the use of large spectrum chunks, these bands are used as intensively as possible, both through tight carrier packing, and through frequency reuse among the user beams. The price to pay is a degradation of the signal to interference ratio at the receive side. · Non linear Interference coming from inter-modulation products: In the payload design reported in [3], the output section is composed of 1 TWTA for 2 spots, which clearly benefits to the payload mass efficiency. The amplified bandwidth is thus 2.9 GHz. Since the carrier bandwidth may not exceed 200 to 400 Mbauds, this leads to consider a strong multicarrier operation of the TWTA, with typically 6 to 12 carriers per TWTA. The subsequent increase of the relative power of intermodulation products with respect to the current generation could be made even worse by the possible imperfection of TWTA linearization over such a large bandwidth. · Inter-Symbol Interference (ISI) and Adjacent Channel Interference (ACI): Considering the current trend towards tighter roll-offs in the waveform shaping (5% is now proposed in DVB- S2x) or closer carrier spacing, the transmitted carriers are more sensitive to the in-band distortions and to the non-ideal out-of-band rejection induced by the satellite channel filters. · Interference coming from the frequency re-use between user beams :as the user beams are getting closer (0.3° or lower with respect to 0.5° – 0.7° as of today), larger satellite antenna reflectors are required to provide sufficient discrimination between spots using the same color. Nevertheless accommodation and manufacturing issues limit the reflector size to 3.5m, as far as solid reflector are considered, which results in a degradation of the antenna beam-to-beam isolation. The situation is worsened by the satellite instability which becomes quite significant with respect to spot size, despite possible improvement of the tracking system. It should be noted that the penalty induced by these sources of interference on the link budget is all the more significant as higher order modulations, with higher SNIR requirements, are considered. To mitigate these sources of interference, several techniques are investigated for future HTS systems.
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