Performance evaluation of SATCOM link in the presence of radio frequency interference

Abstract

Digital Video Broadcasting - Satellite - Second Generation (DVB-S2) and Digital Video Broadcasting - Return Channel via Satellite (DVB-RCS) are two important commercial satellite communications (SATCOM) standards, for forward link and return link information transmission via satellites, correspondingly. Advanced channel coding schemes have been designed in DVB-S2 and DVB-RCS to mitigate the information transmission uncertainties and unintentional interferences effects. However, the intentional interferences have been shown to increase dramatically in SATCOM application scenarios. Therefore, performance evaluation of a SATCOM link in the presence of both unintentional radio frequency interference (RFI) and intentional RFI are critical. The evaluation could provide guidance for next-generation SATCOM upgrades. In this paper, we leverage the Intelligent Fusion Technology, Inc. (IFT) communication data link simulator (ICDLS) to evaluate the performances of SATCOM links in the presence of various RFI conditions. The comprehensive RFIs are categorized into three types, which are wideband RFI, narrowband RFI, and radar RFI. Specifically, the carrier and phase synchronization errors caused by RFI are evaluated. Various waveforms including modulation and coding (MODCOD) schemes set in DVB-S2 and DVB-RCS standards are then evaluated considering the synchronization errors due to the existence of various RFI. Valuable observations are obtained based on ICDLS, which can be provided for next-generation SATCOM standards development.