FPGA Based Transmitter Design Using Adaptive Coding and Modulation Schemes for Low Earth Orbit Satellite Communications

Abstract

In this study, a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) based high rate transmitter is developed for low earth orbit satellite communication links using adaptive coding and modulation (ACM) techniques. The developed transmitter structure is modeled in MATLAB. Then, the MATLAB model is taken as reference for developing an FPGA design. This design is implemented on Xilinx Kintex Ultrascale XCKU060 FPGA which provides high performance and whose space grade model will be on product line in December 2020. It is shown that the developed transmitter structure can reach a spectral efficiency of 7.068 bits per second per Hertz (bps/Hz) with a code rate of 0.8889 in the highest rate mode. The implemented FPGA design of the transmitter structure can support input data rates from 50.7225 megabits per second (Mbps) to 530.1 Mbps with a baud rate of 75 mega symbol per second (Msps) and a sampling rate of 300 mega sample per second (MSps) at the output.