ARTES-5.1 – ESA Telecom Technology Workplan ... - Emits - ESA

Annex 2Page 8Ref. Activity Title Procurement Policy Budget Planned Tender Estimated(KEUR) IssueDuration (months)3A.037 Hardware Demonstrator of Fourth Generation Mobile Satellite Systems Open Competitive Tender Type: C 2000 Priority 2 18(09.153.01)Objective: To build a hardware demonstrator implementing the physical, link and MAC layer of the satellite component of 4th Generation Mobile Satellite systems. The demonstrator will also includesatellite channel and satellite system emulation functions.Description: The ARTES 1 “Study of the role of satellite in 4G networks” highlighted the role of the satellite to complement the terrestrial evolution of the 3rd Generation mobile systems either in areaswhere the terrestrial deployment cannot be guaranteed or with services more efficiently provided by the satellite wide coverage. Therefore, this demonstrator follows the ARTES 1 activitywhere the evolutions of two terrestrial air interfaces were identified as candidates for the satellite component of the 4G: WiMAX and 3GPP LTE.These air interfaces include mechanisms to increase throughput in the terrestrial wireless channel. However, most of the mechanisms are not applicable to or counterproductive in the satellitechannel characterised by slow flat fading, non-linear distortion and long round trip delays. On the other hand, the compatibility of the satellite access schemes with the terrestrial counterpartsis one of the most important criteria to keep the user terminal cost and form factor at an acceptable level and facilitate interoperability between terrestrial and satellite networks. Therefore,adaptations to these air interfaces are required to achieve good performance over satellite while reusing as much as possible the terrestrial technology. Furthermore, both the LTE and WiMAXfamily offer the possibility of different transmission bandwidths which will help to the scalability and flexibility of the overall system.The activity aims at providing a system solution for satellite operators and industry manufactures, who are already busy planning the next generation of Mobile Satellite Systems.The main challenges for this demonstrator reside in selection and optimisation of the physical layer and link layer parameters, the design of algorithms allowing synchronising the signal atvery low C/N values, the introduction of techniques to increase robustness against non-linear distortion and phase noise and the design and implementation of mechanisms allowing forefficient operation over the LMS channel. To do so, the demonstrator shall model in an accurate manner the satellite channel.In addition, the demonstrator shall implement MIMO techniques. To this purpose the channel emulator shall be capable of faithfully reproducing the key characteristics of the selected satellite(and terrestrial if applicable) system. Both spatial and polarization channel diversity shall be included together with a realistic satellite and user terminal antenna model which are the elementspermitting the exploitation of such diversity.This activity will be carried out in two phases: a first phase will analyse the relevant system scenarios and define the demonstrator requirements including the preliminary architectural designof the main HW demonstrator modules (terminal emulator, Hub emulator, channel simulators, traffic generators, etc); it will be followed by an implementation phase that will include thesystem and functional validation and the 4G MSS system performance tests covering different operational scenarios.The first goal of the activity is to prove the feasibility and performance of the satellite component in the 4G context. It is expected that these outcomes will be used in the relevantstandardisation bodies like ETSI MSS WG. The second objective of this activity is to provide a platform for trials and demonstrations for future projects constituting a key asset to satelliteoperators and industry for the development of the commercial MSS systems.NOTE: This activity has been designated as "Priority 2". Priority 2 activities will only be initiated on the explicit request of at least one delegation.