A Ka-band Satellite Beacon Receiver for Propagation Experiment

The design of a low-cost beacon receiver based on software defined radio is presented. The motivation for such a receiver is to investigate atmospheric impairments at the Ka frequency band. The receiver has been tested by the Hotbird 13A, ASTRA 3B and Alphasat satellite beacon signals. A GNU Radio software development toolkit and a USRP device were used for the development of a beacon receiver application. We have tested and validated the beacon receiver operation by the linearity test, by comparing the received signal levels with the corresponding rainfall data, and by comparing the measurement results with the appropriate ITU-R models. The low-cost beacon receiver passed all these tests successfully, confirming that we established a reliable measuring system. After the validation period we were monitoring the measured data on a daily basis, excluding erroneous data and regularly implementing system improvements. The validated data was further processed by a MATLAB tool where statistical analysis is performed. In particular, we developed procedures for attenuation and scintillation analysis as well as procedures for the analysis of second order statistics, corresponding to the fade duration and fade slope distribution. Measurement data processing was performed in three phases, each phase giving predefined output results. These results range from raw propagation data via intermediate propagation data and analysed experimental statistics up to the graphical statistical representation.