MULTI-ANTENNA GROUND STATION FOR IMPLEMENTING A SEAMLESS HANDOVER WITH DIVERSITY FROM AN ORIGIN MOVING SATELLITE TO A DESTINATION MOVING SATELLITE, AND CORRESPONDING HANDOVER METHOD

摘要

A ground station with P antennas for individually tracking a satellite outof an origin first moving satellite S1 and a destination second movingsatelliteS2 comprises, connected in series, a multi-channel reception and processingdevice (122) and a combination device with configurable diversity (124), andcomprises a device for managing diversity and seamless handover (126) of areception communication link from the origin first satellite S1 to thedestination second satellite S2.The diversity and seamless handover management device (126) isconfigured to manage and coordinate the execution of a succession of kseamless and unitary antenna handovers Bi, and during each seamless andunitary handover Bi, control the antennas (112, 114, 116), the multi-channelreception and processing device (122) and the combination device withconfigurable diversity (124) by determining and sending to them respectively:.* satellite acquisition pointing commands, and.* commands for alignment in time and in phase of the P signalsreceived as input of the multi-channel reception and processing devicegenerated as a function of measurements of time and phase deviations ofP-1 signals received as input in relation to the signal received as inputtakenas reference signal, and.* a setpoint for selection of the output processed signals to becombined as a function of the scheduling of the handover from the firstdiversity configuration C1 to the second diversity configuration C2 and as afunction of measurements of qualities of the signals received as input of thereception and processing device.