K K SHARMA

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COMMUNICATION SATELLITE LINK DESIGN :

Introduction, General Link Design Equations, System

Noise Temperature, C/N and G/T Ratio,

Atmospheric and Ionospheric Effects on Link Design,
Complete Link Design, Earth Station Parameters.

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Introduction

The satellite link is probably the most basic in

microwave communications since a line-of-sight path

typically exists between the Earth and space. This
means that an imaginary line extending between the
transmitting or receiving Earth station and the satellite
antenna passes only through the atmosphere and no
ground obstacles.

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 Such a link is governed by free-space propagation with

only limited variation with respect to time due to

various constituents of the atmosphere.
Free-space attenuation is determined by the inverse
square law, which states that the power received is
inversely proportional to the square of the distance.

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LINK DESIGN
The required factors include the performance of the

satellite itself, the configuration and performance of

the uplink and downlink Earth stations, and the
impact of the propagation medium in the frequency
band of interest.
Also important is the efficient transfer of user
information across the relevant interfaces at the Earth
stations, involving such issues as the precise nature of
this information, data protocol, timing, and the
telecommunications interface standards that apply to
the service.
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 A proper engineering methodology guarantees that

the application will go into operation as planned,

meeting its objectives for quality and reliability.

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 The design of satellite communication is very complex.

In order to obtain the maximum performance some

important factors related to the design are to be
considered:
1. Weight of the satellite
2. DC power generated on board
3. Frequency band allocation
4. Multiple access techniques

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 The design of a satellite-communication system is

a critical process which requiring compromises
between many factor to achieve the optimum
performance at a reasonable cost.
The cost to build and launch a Geo satellite is
approximately $ 25,000 per kg. Therefore, weight is
the most critical factor in the design of a satellite.
In the most radio systems, antennas are a limiting
factor in the capacity and performance of the
communication system.
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 Satellite link consists of up link and down link and

involve great distances. The strength of a radiated

signal decreases as the square of the distance it travels,
so satellite signals becomes very weak after their long
journey in space. It can be amplified to overcome the
loss problem. Therefore, signal loss is not by itself a
performance parameters of the satellite link.

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 On the other hand, the signal to noise ratio is

proportional to the probability of error of a receiver

and thus it affects the information carrying capacity of
the link.
In a satellite link there are two signal paths : an uplink
from the earth station to the satellite, and
a down link from the satellite to the earth station.

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 While designing a satellite system requires knowledge

of the required performance of the uplink and down

link, the characteristics of propagation and
attenuation by rain for the frequency band being used
at the earth station locations and the parameters of
earth station and satellite.

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General Link Design Equations

The design of satellite link is quite important as it gives

:
1. The estimate of power that the satellite would be
able to receive from the transmitting earth station and
2. The power received from satellite repeater by the
receiving earth station.

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 The link budget calculation accounts for several

factors such as absorption by the medium through

which the satellite signals propagate various kinds of
noise sources and various design considerations of
earth station.
In fact the main controlling factor in design of link is
the frequency of the uplink and downlink.

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 To understand satellite communication, the

calculations of the power received by an earth
station from a satellite transmitter is necessary.
Let us consider a transmitting isotropic source
which is radiating a total power Pt watts uniformly
in all the directions, as shown in Fig.

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 The product of Pt.Gt is often called the Effective

Isotropic Radiated Power (EIRP) and it may be

called as figure of merit of transmitter. EIRP is used
as a measure of the satellite transmission as well as the
earth station transmission.

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 In the Fig. 2.3 transmit and receiver antenna are shown

and the distance between them is R (meters) gain of

receive antenna is Gr and receive power is Pr.
If distance between these antennas is R; then, flux
density in the direction of the antenna bore sight is
given as (refers to Fig. 2.3)

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Friis Transmission Equation

(i) This equation represents relationship between
transmitted power, received power, antenna gain,
and distance between transmitter and receiver.
(ii) This applies to a system in which there is a
transmitting antenna, a receiving antenna, and
direct electromagnetic path without obstacles
between the two antennas.
(iii) It does not apply to the various types of
indirect propagation, such as sky wave bounce and
tropospheric scatter.
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Equation (2.6) refers to an ideal case. That is, there is no additional loss in
the link. More general form of Eq. (2.6) can be written as

where Lbf = Earth station back off loss.

Lbo = Earth station antenna bonding and feeder losses.
Equation (2.6) allows the system designer to adjust parameters such as
transmitter power, antenna gain and recalculate the received power.

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SYSTEM NOISE TEMPERATURE

Noise temperature is very important parameter since it

provides a way of determining thermal noise generated

by the devices in the receiver system.
The most important source of noise in the receiver is
the thermal noise in its preamplifier.

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 To maintain the best possible carrier to noise ratio i.e.

quality of communication, noise at the receiver must

be reduced.
This can be done by keeping the bandwidth in the
receiver, usually in the IF amplifier stages, to be large
enough to allow the signal to pass unrestricted, while
keeping the noise power to the lowest possible value.

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The performance of the receiver system is determined by

system noise temperature TS.
TS is also refers as effective input noise temperature
of the receiver and is defined as the source noise
temperature of a noise source located at the input of a
noise less receiver which would produced the same
contribution to the receiver output noise at the
internal noise of actual system itself.

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 In the receiver before demodulator a RF amplifier and

IF amplifier are exists.

So, if the overall gain of the receiver is G and
bandwidth is B, the noise power at the demodulator
input is

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 If PR is the signal power at the input to the receiver then

the signal power at the demodulation input will be

PRG.
Hence the carrier to noise ratio at the demodulator
input is given by

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NOISE DENSITY

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NOISE FIGURE
The noise figure is the difference in decibels (dB)

between the noise output of the actual receiver to the

noise output of an ideal receiver with the same
overall gain and bandwidth when the receivers are
connected to matched sources at the standard noise
temperature (usually 290 K).

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OVERALL SYSTEM NOISE

TEMPERATURE

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Calculation of System Noise

Temperature
Figure 2.7 shows a communication receiver. The

equivalent circuit used to represent this receiver is

shown in Fig. 2.8 in which each device is replaced by
single noise source with temperature, TS.

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GAIN TO EQUIVALENT NOISE

TEMPERATURE (G/Te)
It is represented by G/Te
A typical signal strength received from a satellite is
only a few Pico watts (1 Pico watt = 1012 W).

Therefore it is very important that receiving

antenna and associated electronics should
introduce as little noise as possible and for this
reason LNA is located at the feed point of the
antenna.
The efficiency of this combination is usually
quoted as the ratio of the gain to noise
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C/N RATIO

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EVALUATION OF C/N RATIO FOR SATELLITE

LINK
Carrier-to-noise ratio over the satellite link is of

fundamental importance.
This is a major determinant of the theoretical
information carrying capacity of the link and quality of
signal received at earth station.
For its evaluation a satellite uplink is shown in Fig.

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 Let Su(t) be the transmitted carrier and its effective

isotropic radiated power is given by EIRP = Pt Gt

where Pt = Carrier power antenna feed.
Gt = Transmit antenna gain.
Su(t) suffers the following attenuations.
(i) Uplink free-space loss
(ii) Atmospheric attenuation and
(iii) Antenna tracking loss.
In addition, it is corrupted with white Gaussian noise ;
n(t).
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 The C/N ratio at downlink is given by,

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FM IMPROVEMENT FACTOR
The limiting factor for (C/N) in almost all satellite

systems is the threshold effect in the receiver

modulator in which a linear relationship exists
between (C/N) at the input to the demodulator and to
(S/N) at the output of the demodulator provided (C/N)
is above a certain value known as threshold.

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 For a typical FM demodulator the output S/N after the

demodulator is given by

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ATMOSPHERIC AND IONOSPERIC EFFECTS

ON LINK DESIGN
It is known that the atmospheric and ionospheric

propagation are subject to absorption, diffusion,

refraction, rotation of the polarization plane of the EM
wave.
These effects are dependent on the path length.
The lower layers of atmosphere cause absorption and
diffusion.
The upper layer of the atmosphere (troposphere) causes
refraction.
The depolarization is produced when the radio wave
traverse through the ionosphere layer.

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INTERFERENCE EFFECT ON COMPLETE LINK

DESIGN
There are several types of interference which effect the link

design equation because they contribute noise power.

1. One kind of interference arises from terrestrial microwave
links because 6/4 GHz frequency band is allocated to
satellite communication and also to the terrestrial
microwave links.
2. Second type of interference in the satellite link is the cross
polarization interference and depolarization caused by rain.
3. Third kind of interference that might take place in a
satellite link is the adjacent channel interference.
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EARTH STATION PARAMETERS

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