Telecommunications engineering

• Created in 2012
• 15 scholarships per year
• Cutting edge equipment (up to 40 GHz)
Long‐Term Objective
• Ground Station employing wideband beamforming
• Academic research
• Ground station operator training

Techologies Involved
• Direct conversion
• Software Defined Radio
• Beamforming (analog, digital, optical)
• RF over fiber
• Phased array antenna
• Modulation/Demodulation algorithms
• Encoding/Decoding algorithms
Background
Digital Receiver

Preselector filter Antialias Analog to digital 

LNA conversion
filter
Bandpass Sampling

FRF: Center frequency of RF signal

NZ: Nyquist zone

Fs: Sampling frequency
Bandpass Sampling

fRF: RF signal frequency
TJ:  Accumulated jitter
SNR degradation vs. jitter
66

64

62

60

58
SNR [dB]

56

54

fRF = 438 MHz 52

TJ: 1 ps SNR = 51.2 dB  50

48

46
2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16
-13
TJ [s] x 10
Analog to Digital Converter

Analog Devices  AD9249 
Resolution 14 bits
Sampling frequency (max) 65 MSPS
Full Power Bandwidth 650 MHz
Aperture time uncertainty (TAJ) 135 fs RMS
Number of channels: 16 (simultaneous)
Frequency Plan

fRF1 = 435 MHz

fRF2 = 438 MHz
BW = 3 MHz

Center frequency of RF signal:
FRF = 436.5 MHz

Nyquist zone:
NZ = 14

Sampling frequency:
Fs = 64.667 MHz

At 1st Nyquist zone
fc = Fs/4               = 16,667 MHz
f1 = Fs/4 – BW/2 = 14.667 MHz
f2 = Fs/4 + BW/2 = 17.667 MHz
Digital Receiver ‐ SDR

Complex
Data
from ADC
Demodulator

NCO

Configurable parameters
• Channel center frequency
• Channel bandwidth More than one channel at a time
• Modulation scheme
• Decodification algorithm
• …..
Digital Receiver Model
Future Work

Conformal phased array antennas

Beamforming

Beamforming test‐bed
Digital Receiver Testbed ‐ Beamforming Testbed

+ planar 4x4 phased array

+ RF front end

+ processing framework

AD9249‐EBZ
ADC AD9249 HSC‐ADC‐EVALDZ
14 bits XC6VLX75T Virtex‐6 FPGA
Up to 65 MSPS 256 kB FIFO 
650 MHZ FPBW Supports multiple ADC channels up to 18 bits
TAJ 135 fs RMS Simple USB port interface (2.0)
16 simultaneous channels Software applications and examples
On board oscillator
External clock input
On board power regulators
 Beam
Beamforming

Digital beamforming

Optical beamforming
Future work

Conformal phased array antennas for satellite applications

Muchas gracias por su atención

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