2014 7th Advanced Satellite Multimedia Systems Conference and the 13th Signal Processing for Space Communications
Workshop (ASMS/SPSC)
Review of Terabit/s Satellite, the Next Generation of
HTS Systems
P. Inigo, O. Vidal, B. Roy, E. Alberty, N. Metzger,
D. Galinier
Telecommunications Satellites Business Division
Airbus Defence and Space
Toulouse, France
Abstract—The purpose of the present paper is to characterize
the next generation of HTS allowing to reach the Terabit/s
satellite systems. The associated technologies are presented and
the challenges ahead are reviewed and assessed proposing
solutions to address the identified difficulties.
Keywords—High Throughput Satellite; Terabit/s; Q/V-band;
optical links; photonics
I. INTRODUCTION
In the recent years, the second generation of high
throughput satellites in Ka band (Viasat-1, Ka Sat, …) have
allowed for a significant increase in the overall system capacity
and instantaneous user data rates going up to 100 Gbps total
capacity thanks to the application of the multibeam concept
with narrower beams and exploiting the frequency reuse
principle. This important technology advance has allowed
satellites to be back in the course of high throughput network
access solutions and have improved their suitability for the
current Internet requirements. Still, the demand for higher and
higher peak data rates continues to maintain pressure on
communication infrastructures since FTTH has replaced ADSL
as the new reference in terms of performances. The satellite
industry is preparing the next evolution for the HTS, the
Terabit/s based architectures through different R&D studies
during the past years funded by the European Space Agency,
National Space Agencies and the European Commission.
Thanks to these studies it has been possible to carry out
comprehensive end-to-end system assessment of such systems
and propose innovative architectures capable of achieving the
goal of a Terabit/s satellite capacity. Disruptive techniques and
technologies have been applied in order to define such satellite
including very large platforms, highly efficient amplification,
large reflectors, usage of new frequency bands including Q/V
band and optical links as well as advanced air interface
techniques.
II. THE TERABIT/S SATELLITE PRINCIPLE
During the previously mentioned studies, it has been
possible to demonstrate the strong dependency of capacity on
the available bandwidth, even more than power. Indeed system
978-1-4799-5893-1/14/$31.00 ©2014 IEEE
J. Anzalchi, G. Huggins, S. Stirland
Telecommunications Satellites Business Division
Airbus Defence and Space
Stevenage, United Kingdom
capacity increases linearly with the amount of spectrum at
constant EIRP (Equivalent Isotropically Radiated Power)
density values. Hence, spectrum is a key design driver for our
system. In order to increase the available spectrum there are
two main strategies to consider:
Increase the bandwidth allocated to FSS services (at
regulatory level)
Further assessing techniques that can allow for a larger
bandwidth usage or a better exploitation of the currently
available bandwidth.
The Terabit/s satellite architecture1 has assumed current
frequency regulations and has based the capacity enlargement
mainly on the second option. The targeted capacity has been
reach through increasing the frequency re-utilization factor
with reduced beam sizes, and thus increasing the available user
link spectrum.
III. SYSTEM DEFINITION
A. Regulatory matters
The Terabit/s mission will be designed for a EU27
coverage area and thus the frequency plan shall be in line with
the regulatory constraints as identified by ITU worldwide,
CEPT in Europe and also the different national authorities. The
proposed system design assumes user links in Ka-band which
can be separated into the following ECC frequency bands ([2],
[3], [4], [5]):
Shared civil Ka-band : 17.7 – 19.7 GHz (downlink) and
27.5 – 29.5 GHz (uplink)
Exclusive civil Ka-band (commercial band) : 19.7 –
20.2 GHz (downlink) and 29.5 – 30 GHz (uplink)
Governmental Ka-band: 20.2 – 21.2GHz (downlink)
and 30 - 31GHz (uplink)
Downlink Ka band: 17.3 – 17.7 GHz
1
The mission described in the present paper was studied under a programme
of and funded by the European Space Agency. The view expressed herein can
in no way be taken to reflect the official opinion of the European Space
Agency.
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Workshop (ASMS/SPSC)
The frequency plan for the feeder link is driven by the
requirement to reduce as much as possible the number of
gateways and to be able to place the gateways within the
service area. Hence, for the feeder link, Q/V band and part of
the Ka band spectrum has been considered. The FSS Q/V band
comprises 5 GHz bandwidth for both uplink and downlink.
Unlike the uplink band, the downlink band is contiguous.
Part of the Q/V band has been identified by NATO Joint
Frequency Agreement for future military FSS and MSS
requirement for satellite communication downlinks. The
harmonised band is: 39.5-40.5 GHz downlink paired with 50.4-
51.4 GHz uplink. The band 39.5-40.5 GHz / 50.4-51.4 GHz
could be shared between civil and military applications.
B. Frequency plan
Taking into account the regulatory constraints, the
following frequency plan as shown in Fig. 2 has been
considered.
FWD gateway uplink
42.5 43.5 47.2 48.65 50.1 50.566
17.3 17.916 18.75 19.2 20.2
FWD user downlink
Fig. 1. Frequency plan
The Ka band feeder uplink will share the Ka band user
antenna on the satellite. The Q/V band feeder will use a
dedicated antenna on the satellite.
This frequency plan allows connecting 1 gateway beam to 8
user beams instead of 6 user beams when using Q/V band
feeder link spectrum only, or 4 user beams when using only the
47.2 – 50.1 GHz band. Hence, this reduces the number of
required gateways by 2/3 or by ½ respectively. This reduction
in gateway sites compensates largely for the increased gateway
cost implied by the fact that each GW site shall have Q/V and
Ka RF capabilities.
C. User beams and gateways
The system scenario that has been investigated assumes a
user beam layout of 260 beams of 0.21° over EU27 coverage
area, as illustrated in Fig. 2.
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Fig. 2. User beam layout
This number of beams has been selected through a top-
down approach so as to approach the Terabit/s capacity based
on the selected frequency plan and assuming realistic spectral
efficiencies. According to the frequency plan presented above,
RTN user uplink & FWD gateway uplink
this leads to 33 active gateways.
27.8285 28.806 28.95 29.4525
51.4 27.5 28.4445 28.9485 29.4 30
To mitigate the propagation attenuation for the Q/V band
feeder links we have selected a diversity solution called N+P
[6]. In this scheme in a given feeder beam, only one gateway is
deployed. However, the system implements more feeder beams
and deploys more gateways than the required active gateways.
37.5 40 40.397
It is assumed that for N active gateways, P additional gateways
RTN gateway downlink
are deployed as back-up, leading to a total of N+P gateways.
The additional gateways are deployed sufficiently far away
from other gateways in order to ensure full decorrelation of
rain events.
After assuming full-decorrelation of rain events between
sites, the problem has been modelled by a random variable
following a binomial law. In order to ensure a single feeder
link availability of 99.99%, a total of 4 back-up gateways have
been identified.
D. Air Interface performances
We will assume a DVB-S2 [8] / DVB-RCS2 [9] air
interface for the system capacity and availability calculations.
For both the FWD and the RTN link we will assume a variable
FMT margin: the FMT margin is small in clear sky conditions
and increases when the atmospheric attenuations increase.
For our analyses, we will assume that following the
identified roadmap for ground segment consolidated by the
recently published DVB-S2X [10]; by 2020 the roll-off factor
for consumer equipment will be 5% for both the FWD and the
RTN link.
The DVB-TM working group has also tackled wideband
transmissions by considering increased symbol rates up to 500
Mbaud [10].
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Workshop (ASMS/SPSC)
Taking into account these planned developments together
with the 5% roll-off and the previously presented frequency
plan, we have selected on the FWD link baud rates of 426
Mbaud. For the RTN link baud rates up to 12 Mbaud are
considered.
E. Ground segment hypothesis
The following terminal RF performances have been
assumed for the FWD downlink:
Clear Sky G/T @ 18GHz: 17.8 dB/K
Terminal XPD: 24 dB
The following terminal RF performances have been
assumed for the RTN uplink:
Terminal EIRP @ 28.3 GHz: 47.9 dBW assuming a 3W
amplifier
Terminal XPD: 22 dB
Terminal ACI: 25 dB
The feeder link dimensioning has been done with the target
that the feeder link should not be the sizing link in the overall
link budget. This objective has been translated into the
objective that the feeder link should not degrade the median
user link budget (at 50% of the coverage area) by more than
0.5 to 1 dB in clear sky conditions.
F. Payload architecture
Different antenna configurations could be considered for
our system design such as for example:
3xSFPB (Single Feed Per Beam) configuration with
4.8m Tx/Rx
4xSFPB configuration with 4.8m Tx/Rx
2xMFPB (Multi Feed Per Beam) configuration with
6.3m Tx and 4.8m Rx
The above list is not exhaustive but aims to illustrate that
feasible antenna configurations exist. Each of the above
configurations has different advantages/disadvantages in terms
of intrinsic RF performance (directivity, C/I), cost, TRL
(Technology Readiness Level) level and accommodation
constraints on the satellite platform. This paper presents the
performance results based on the 2xMFPB antenna
configuration.
In order to implement a Terabit/s satellite we have assumed
a transparent payload. The proposed repeater architecture
assumes 110W Ka band tubes shared by 2 beams and 60W
Q/V band tubes per gateway and per polarization.
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G. Platform and launchers enveloppe
The target platform for the large mission will be based on
future evolutions of the Alphabus extended platform for which
we aim to further increase the available payload domain by
innovative technologies in power generation, battery and
propulsion. Proton and Ariane 5ME have been identified as
candidate launchers, assuming full electric propulsion.
H. System performance analysis: capacity and availability
Taking as inputs the antenna performances, the FSL (Free
Space Loss) and clear sky propagation attenuation together
with the system hypotheses described previously we have
calculated the FWD and RTN link budgets over the coverage
area. The next table depicts the achieved capacity.
TABLE I. LINK CAPACITY ESTIMATE
FWD link RTN link
Carrier symbol rate 426 Mbaud 12 Mbaud
Nb of carriers per beam 3 49
Nb of beams 260 260
Spectral efficiency 2.1 bits/symbol 2.2 bits/symbol
Total FWD capacity 698 Gbps 338 Gbps
Finally, the user link availability has been computed. We
have observed a user FWD link availability better than 99.7%
over 100% of the coverage area. On the return link the
availability is less critical as we can generate sufficient rain
margin by the combination of DRA and ACM. The return link
availability is guaranteed at 99.7% over 100% of the coverage
area at 6 Mbaud and with QPSK 1/3.
The case study that has been presented has shown that a
total capacity of 1.036 Tbps can be achieved over a continental
coverage with 260 beams and the use of the full civil spectrum
at Ka band and feeder links in Ka and Q/V band.
IV. MAIN CHALLENGES
The key conclusion of the preliminary system design study
is that a Terabit/s satellite in 2020 is deemed feasible. The
improvements required at payload, platform and ground
segment level to achieve this result are evaluated as feasible for
a 2020 time frame. Still several challenges have been
identified.
A. Challenge 1 - Bandwidth scarcity
Radio frequency resources remain limited and subject to
coordination with other terrestrial systems. As it has been
highlighted, the system total capacity is directly dependent of
the accessible spectrum.
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Workshop (ASMS/SPSC)
B. Challenge 2 – Large gateway network
Due to the large number of beams as well as the large
spectrum per beam, the Terabit/s system requires a significant
uplink bandwidth up to 377 GHz. The frequency plan has been
optimized to limit as far as possible the number of gateways by
allocating large spectrum per gateway. Still, up to 37 gateways
are required to serve all the users beams. This is quite a
significant number of ground stations compared to more
classical satellite system. For each gateway location, the
satellite ground infrastructure (RF and baseband equipment)
but also connectivity to the high speed terrestrial backbone is
needed. As a result, the ground segment becomes an important
expense category when deploying the full system.
C. Challenge 3 – Large payload mass footprint
The implementation of such large number of beams
requires a large quantity of RF equipment at repeater level and
an important antenna subsystem. The mass of such payload
design is quite heavy and requires the implementation of a
large satellite platform capable of accommodating the different
elements and lifting up such weight.
D. Challenge 4 - Adequacy of the provided capacity to the
user needs
The current design assumes a regular fix design. This might
not be the best way to match the user demand all through the
satellite lifetime for several reasons:
User distribution over the coverage area is not
homogeneous and it is likely not to become during
satellite lifetime
From the time the system is designed, to the time the
satellites reaches its end of life time, more than 15 years
will elapse. User consumption habits will significantly
evolve during this time and so will do the associated
satellite operator business model.
As a result, it might happen that some of the beams get
quickly fully loaded while others remain emptier loaded. This
means definitely an unoptimized usage of the satellite
resources.
V. SOLUTIONS
Face to the previously presented challenges, Airbus DS has
been working on the potential solutions. Some of them have
been directly applied to the design assessed in the R&D
studies, some others have started to been analyzed but further
efforts will be required in the coming months and years. The
next paragraphs illustrate the solutions proposed to overcome
the main challenges of next generation Terabit/s HTS.
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A. Solution to challenge 1- Usage of the 17.7-19.7 GHz
shared spectrum for the deployment of user terminals
During the design of the Terabit/s frequency plan, the full
Ka-band spectrum has been allocated to the users in an attempt
to increase the overall bandwidth per beam and thus increase
the capacity. This bandwidth is a jointly shared band between
the terrestrial links and the space ones, today mostly occupied
by terrestrial links or satellite gateway stations. It is thus
required that the satellite community continues to reinforce the
frequency coordination efforts for granting the necessary
spectrum is made available in an homogeneous way for this
next generation of HTS systems. Besides, in order to free the
Ka-band spectrum, the gateway links have been moved to the
Q/V-band which remains a relatively unused band. This band
will become more popular in the near future and thus it might
be also the object of important frequency coordination actions.
B. Solution to challenge 2 - Optical links
It has been assessed the possibility to move the feeder links
to optical links using the 1.55µm wavelength technology and
remaining transparent for the user segment. This technology is
widely used today in terrestrial fiber communications but has
not yet applied for the communications between the earth and a
GEO satellite. Still in the current context in which a very large
uplink throughput is required, the great capacity available in
the optical domain is a very interesting alternative allowing for
deploying a single nominal gateway station equipped with a
satellite telescope to serve the full HTS. This technology
suffers for more severe attenuations than Q/V-band also related
to the meteorology (presence or not of clouds) and will thus
need to count with the deployment of additional sites for
redundancy. Still, for a Terabit/s satellite like mission 99.8% of
availability can be reached with a network of 9 gateways
located at current satellite existing hubs in Europe. Allowing
for a devoted optimization of Optical Ground Stations (OGS)
considering existing large fiber backbone station and potential
north Africa locations (with better meteorological conditions),
99.9% can be reached with 6 OGS. Two possible optical air
interfaces solutions could be foreseen: analog and digital to
modulate the RF DVB-S2 signal that is later transmitted to the
users that remain in Ka-band. A devoted assessment of these
two alternatives is done in the framework of the BATS EC
study.
C. Solution to challenge 3 – Photonics technologies
In the previously presented design for a Terabit/s satellite, a
range of innovative repeater equipment is assumed to be
available by 2020 time frame allowing to achieve significant
mass and footprint saving. Still, the total payload mass for such
design counts for 2.6 kg. The implementation of photonics
technologies, mainly as optical frequency up/down converters,
as fiber replacing waveguides&coaxial cables and as optical
filters, has been estimated to allow for a significant 20% mass
reduction.
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Workshop (ASMS/SPSC)
D. Solution to challenge 4 – Flexible satellite missions
Several types of flexibility can be proposed at satellite level
including coverage, power and spectrum. Diverse transparent
repeater architectures can be proposed allowing for power and
spectrum flexibility including MPA’s, flexi-tubes, flexible
filtering, digital processors etc. Additional innovative antenna
technologies like active antennas can allow for generating
different beam layouts. New system techniques such as on-
ground beam forming or beam hopping can provide additional
benefits. The key challenge of the flexible missions is the joint
optimization of the end-to-end design to the heterogeneous
evolving traffic context considering complex and multi-variant
trade-offs between design, operation complexity and resulting
cost/Mbps. The latter is besides strongly linked to the satellite
operator business plan and is particular from one mission to
another.
VI. CONCLUSIONS
The key conclusion of the present paper is that a Terabit/s
satellite in 2020 is deemed feasible. The associated
improvements required at system, payload, platform and
ground segment level have been identified.
Several challenges have been reviewed associated to this
type of new systems and several solutions have been proposed.
Still the technologies mentioned are complex and require
further effort of study and development to reach the final
implementation.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors wish to express their gratitude to ESA for their
continued support and for funding the Terabit/s satellite study,
to the European Commission for funding the BATS program
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and to the consortium members of both studies for their expert
contributions.
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