Channel and Interference adaptive SATCOM Digital beam-former

ABSTRACT: As the size, cost, and power consumption of digital signal processing platforms continue to drop and their performance improves, incorporating digital beam-former (DBF) designs into future SATCOM satellite payloads has become an increasingly attractive option. The advantages offered by digital beam-forming stem from the ability to create composite antenna patterns that vary with both spatial direction and frequency, while also accounting for the distortions in the wireless channel. In response to the Air Force solicitation, MaXentric is proposing a power efficient digital beam-forming system codenamed SABER (Satellite Adaptive Beamforming aRray) that will combine the adaptive weight calculation and channel equalization on a single processing platform. The system is composed of high speed digitizers, FPGAs, and a rad-hardened general-purpose processor that enable the system to efficiently beam-form while also rapidly adapting to changes in operating conditions (such as the number of users, jammers, etc.). BENEFIT: With the SABER platform implementing flexible, power efficient algorithms for beam-forming and channel equalization, MaXentric introduces a scalable, low-cost technology to the satellite communication market. As a result, there are multiple applications for this technology in both commercial and DoD markets. A large potential commercial market involves wireless devices that need to maximize the potential usable bandwidth in a crowded spectrum. On the DoD side, the DBF platform provides an architecture for the next generation of satellite payloads. By using digital beam-forming, payloads will remain flexible while providing better performance.