A3TB: ADAPTIVE ANTENNA ARRAY TEST-BED FOR TRACKING LEO SATELLITES BASED ON SOFTWARE-DEFINED RADIO

摘要

Nowadays, earth stations for downloading data from LEO satellites use large reflector antennas, which pose a number of impairments. In that context, arraying techniques combined with smart antennas techniques appear as solution to improve the performance of traditional ground stations. This paper presents a test bed platform known as A3TB, where a comparative study of several beamforming algorithms is performed. The test bed in based in Software Defined Radio (SDR) technology and uses a novel architecture that can be used with both blind and spatial-based beamforming algorithms. The A3TB concept can be applied to a number of scenarios as it is independent of the signal properties. Simulations carried out using the A3TB considering the APT channel from NOAA satellites show the performance of the concept and the feasibility of the proposed implementation.