A Bidirectional link Budget Simulator for VHTS System Design Under Fading Constraints
Abstract
Satellite communications services are increasingly in need of bandwidth to support the growth of capacity-hungry applications. In response, higher operating frequency bands are being deployed or explored to meet this demand. However, these frequencies make the carriers more susceptible to fading and in particular to heavy rain events that can cause major outages on the feeder side. To address these critical issues, Fade Mitigation Techniques (FMT) should be implemented, but require an extensive parameter tuning and design process to be optimized in system design. Therefore, an extensive simulation and calibration campaign needs to be performed before the system is deployed.
In this paper, we propose a simulator that implements a large variety of these techniques. Indeed, our Python library, BiLiDget (Bidirectional Link BuDget), implements UpLink Power Control (ULPC), Adaptive Coding and Modulation (ACM), and also Smart Gateway Diversity (SGD) in a fullyreconfigurable manner, allowing a complete variation of the design parameters.