Simulation of the Canadian GOES Signal Processor

An international experiment is being conducted to assess the use of geostationary spacecraft to relay 406 MHz distress beacon signals. The development is described of a signal processor that will search a nominal 10 kHz portion of the 406 MHz band, detect anddemodulate a small number of beacons, and produce an alertmessage with low probability of message error. It is shown that thenominal composite link C/No is about 30 dB Hz. The proposedprocessor is described and simulation results are presented. Theresults indicate that the processor has a threshold of about26 dB · Hz, a message error rate of 2 percent or less, and a messagetransfer time of less than 10 min.