Session
Advanced Technologies 3
Location
Salt Palace Convention Center, Salt Lake City, UT
Abstract
Planet is a vertically integrated aerospace and data analytics company that operates the world’s largest commercial fleet of remote sensing satellites. Our mission is to image the whole world every day, and make change visible, accessible, and actionable. We have launched over 600 satellites and built up an automated mission control and ground station infrastructure to monitor and control the satellites, and download the imagery data. Planet’s agile aerospace philosophy of rapid prototyping, iteration, and adaptation of the latest commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) technology has allowed for continuous improvements in data throughputs on our High Speed Downlink radio. Planet’s HSD2 achieves greater than 1.5 Gbps peak data rate from a cubesat platform and here we report the next generation evolution of that radio (HSD3) that achieves ~10 Gbps peak rate at Ka-band from a small satellite platform.
Planet’s High Speed Downlink 3 (HSD3) is the latest generation radio that has been deployed on Pelican and Tanager series of satellites. HSD3 architecture is an extension of HSD2 architecture and operates the space to ground link at Ka-band (25.5 - 27 GHz) with dual polarization capability. In addition, the design supports frequencies for Ka intersatellite links from 27.5 - 30 GHz, as codified at ITU WRC23. Consisting of a total of thirty two 80 MSymbols/Sec channels, HSD3 occupies 1.5GHz of instantaneous bandwidth and utilizes a dual polarization design with 16 channels per polarization. . Each of the 32 channels is capable of delivering up to 350 Mbps peak data rate, and adaptive coding and modulation (ACM) allows dynamic adaptation of the link to the existing signal to noise ratio (SNR) conditions. ACM is critical for maximizing the throughput of HSD3 because Ka-band downlink path is susceptible to rain and humidity resulting in 3-8 dB variation in SNR depending on satellite slant range and atmospheric conditions. We use commercial DVB-S2 IP cores running on a commercial AMD family of Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) for modulation and coding. Planet has custom built a low size, weight, and power (SWaP) Ka-band radio as well as a 3D printed aluminum dual polarization horn array antenna (with 30 dBW EIRP per polarization) that enables the recent improvements in data rates. As of the publication of this paper, we have deployed seven ground stations equipped with Ka-band antennas/receivers as well as commercial DVB-S2 demodulators. We will present the radio architecture and some key results from HSD3, including results demonstrating intersatellite links with a single carrier in both ground and flight demonstrations with the SES mPOWER constellation.
Document Type
Event
Planet's Next Generation Evolution of the High Speed Radio: 10 Gbps Smallsat Radio
Salt Palace Convention Center, Salt Lake City, UT
Planet is a vertically integrated aerospace and data analytics company that operates the world’s largest commercial fleet of remote sensing satellites. Our mission is to image the whole world every day, and make change visible, accessible, and actionable. We have launched over 600 satellites and built up an automated mission control and ground station infrastructure to monitor and control the satellites, and download the imagery data. Planet’s agile aerospace philosophy of rapid prototyping, iteration, and adaptation of the latest commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) technology has allowed for continuous improvements in data throughputs on our High Speed Downlink radio. Planet’s HSD2 achieves greater than 1.5 Gbps peak data rate from a cubesat platform and here we report the next generation evolution of that radio (HSD3) that achieves ~10 Gbps peak rate at Ka-band from a small satellite platform.
Planet’s High Speed Downlink 3 (HSD3) is the latest generation radio that has been deployed on Pelican and Tanager series of satellites. HSD3 architecture is an extension of HSD2 architecture and operates the space to ground link at Ka-band (25.5 - 27 GHz) with dual polarization capability. In addition, the design supports frequencies for Ka intersatellite links from 27.5 - 30 GHz, as codified at ITU WRC23. Consisting of a total of thirty two 80 MSymbols/Sec channels, HSD3 occupies 1.5GHz of instantaneous bandwidth and utilizes a dual polarization design with 16 channels per polarization. . Each of the 32 channels is capable of delivering up to 350 Mbps peak data rate, and adaptive coding and modulation (ACM) allows dynamic adaptation of the link to the existing signal to noise ratio (SNR) conditions. ACM is critical for maximizing the throughput of HSD3 because Ka-band downlink path is susceptible to rain and humidity resulting in 3-8 dB variation in SNR depending on satellite slant range and atmospheric conditions. We use commercial DVB-S2 IP cores running on a commercial AMD family of Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) for modulation and coding. Planet has custom built a low size, weight, and power (SWaP) Ka-band radio as well as a 3D printed aluminum dual polarization horn array antenna (with 30 dBW EIRP per polarization) that enables the recent improvements in data rates. As of the publication of this paper, we have deployed seven ground stations equipped with Ka-band antennas/receivers as well as commercial DVB-S2 demodulators. We will present the radio architecture and some key results from HSD3, including results demonstrating intersatellite links with a single carrier in both ground and flight demonstrations with the SES mPOWER constellation.
