Real-time Wideband Video Synchronization via an Analog QPSK Costas Loop in a Laboratory Demonstration of an E-Band Satellite Downlink

Abstract

A wideband video transmission in E-band from 71 to 76 GHz dedicated to a satellite downlink is demonstrated in a laboratory setup with an analog QPSK Costas loop circuit in 130nm SiGe BiCMOS in the receiver front-end for direct demodulation. A QPSK modulated, uncompressed 4K live video with a total data rate of 6 Gbit/s is received with an EVM of −17.5 dB in real-time at low power consumption due to analog receiver synchronization and without any further synchronization in the digital domain. The Costas loop provides a sufficiently large hold-in range to cover the carrier frequency drift due to the Doppler effect from the satellite overpass and operates with a power efficiency of 940 pJ/bit for the tested video stream data rate.