A reusable signal processing architecture for satellite based communication systems

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Keywords: digital signal processing, embedded systems, telecommunications,satellite technology.The rapid growth of the telecommunications industry is a worldwide phenomenonwith people and computers generating and transmitting more andmore information daily. Despite this growth, there are still areas in SouthAfrica which lack terrestrial communications coverage. People inhabit theserural areas and their essential communication needs are not met. Satellitebased communication coverage can provide a valuable service in these circumstances.In this thesis, the design of a satellite-based communications payloadwhich makes use of software de ned radio techniques is presented in termsof the Open Systems Interconnect layer structure. A robust hardware platformusing a space-quali ed on-board computer, a Xilinx Virtex-5 Field ProgrammableGate Array (FPGA) and a Freescale digital signal processor (DSP)is designed, implemented and thoroughly tested. A device driver is designedfor hardware andrmware components. A prototype ground station is alsodesigned and constructed using a low-power PC, a Xilinx Spartan-3E FPGA,a Freescale DSP and radio frequency hardware.A wide range of testing methodologies were successfully utilised to deploya functional system which is critically evaluated in the last chapter.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University