Nowadays, earth stations for downloading data from LEO (Low Earth Orbit) satellites use large reflector antennas, which pose a number of impairments. In that context, arraying techniques and smart antennas appear as an improvement in performance. This paper presents a comparative study of several beamforming algorithms on a Test-Bed platform, ideas about calibration, robustness topics and some specifics to satellite communications systems such as orbital propagators. All of which will be comprised in a Software Defined Radio (SDR) platform whose description is hereby summarized. For our simulations and measures we will consider the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) satellites and more specifically the APT (Automatic Picture Transmission) signal.
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