Programme Element: ARTES 1
Reference nr.: 12.1TF.11
Planned Tender Issue: quarter 3, 2013
Ground based beam forming (GBBF) techniques can be an alternative to the
formation of beams on board satellites. This presents the advantage of implementing the complexity of the formation of the beams and the associated intense signal processing units on ground. This technique has been used for instance for Mobile-Satellite Systems operating in the U.S. (Terrestar for instance). However, because of the important number of paths that have to be implemented and transmitted to the payload, such a scheme can become bandwidth consuming, in particular when addressing telecommunication services with increasing data rates requirements ? with a very number of beam (hundreds and beyond).Expanding to other services than MSS, the purpose of this activity is to explore new types of GBBF techniques and architectures that could be implemented over the long term (in the next 10 years) and to evaluate the associate technico economic benefits, as well as the associated roadmap that would be necessary to implement to validate the feasibility of the proposed concept, and to achieve a sufficient level of maturity for in orbit validation and commercial implementation.The activity shall include as a minimum:
(1) The definition of reference metrics for the comparison of performances of
architecture of space networks employing or not GBBF techniques (2) The definition of reference scenarii ? for the defined long term perspective - from satellite networks operating in Broadcasting-Satellite Service, in the Fixed-Satellite Services (Broadband), not employing GBBF, and then for each of the proposed reference scenarii (3) The review of the different options for implementing GBBF solutions and their relative merits and associated constraints (4) The selection of preferred architectures (5) A first level design and feasibility assessment for the main functions for the ground and space segment components (6) The performance simulations and comparison of the benefits and costs impacts with respect to the initial situation in (2) and the criteria defined in (1), (7) The definition of a roadmap including the need for prototyping, development, qualification, and validation - and the corresponding cost of implementation of the roadmap (8) The review of the industrial capabilities in Europe to support the development of this roadmap (9) The identification of the market potentials for such approaches (10) The identification of the expected Return On Investment (RoI) that can be expected if the proposed roadmaps where to be implemented.
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