dBm To Show Enhanced SATCOM Link Emulator At Satellite 2008

Oakland, NJ -- dBm Corp. announced that it has increased the precision of its Model SLE700 satellite link emulator to accommodate the needs of next-generation communication satellites that process signals at very high data rates. The enhanced instrument will be featured at the company's booth (324) at the Satellite 2008 conference and exhibition here beginning on February 25.

When testing satellite communications Earth terminals and satellite payloads during development and before deployment, satellite payload developers must evaluate how the communications hardware will perform during service. A wide array of characteristics, including propagation delay, fading, Doppler shift, and phase shift must be induced at precise levels and times to accurately mimic the conditions that occur as a satellite changes its position in the sky. The Model SLE700 provides the transmission path and signal impairments required to make these measurements and is typically embedded in a large closed-loop automated test system that performs hundreds of such tests.

dBm's first satellite link emulator (the Model SLE) has been used in the development of virtually every major satellite communications system since it was introduced in 1999. The SLE700 increased the maximum RF bandwidth to 45 MHz to accommodate wideband modulation schemes, increased signal-to-noise ratio by 15 dB and increased rejection of spurious signals by 10 dB.

New communication satellites have very narrow control loops in order to accommodate increasingly high data rates and are less tolerant of changes in delay and other parameters. As a result, to perform testing in real time, the Model SLE700 must be able to simulate these changes. The enhancements to be shown at Satellite 2008 include an increase in delay resolution from 1 ns to 50 ps, and the ability to program Doppler shift to 0.01 Hz (formerly 1 Hz). In addition, attenuation resolution for flat fading and path loss has been improved from 0.25 dB to 0.1 dB. These enhancements give the Model SLE700 greater performance than any other commercially-available satellite link emulation system.

SOURCE: dBm, LLC