An automated data processing system for satellite propagation beacon measurements

The paper describes an automated data processing system of propagation measurements from satellite beacon in the microwave spectral range. The software has been developed in the framework of the ESA contract "Data Collection and Processing System for the Alphasat TDP5 Ka/Q Band Propagation Experiment" with the purpose to offer a common data processing approach for the Alphasat TDP5 beacon data collected among different experimenters in Europe. The main advantage in using a common data processing system provides homogeneous results to fill in the gap of propagation models. On the other hand, the automated procedure has strong limitations due to non-ideal status of the received signal. The main issue is related with the definition of the propagation events. On one side, the standard data processing software requires a visual inspection from the experimenter. The PDPS procedure extracts information from independent systems such as microwave radiometers or surface meteorological stations and no human interface is expected. This automated approach allows a fastest data processing but there is no possibility to verify the correspondence between the events detector and the beacon signal. Knowing these limitations, the PDPS offers a unique opportunity to the experimenters to expedite the data processing in order to have a preliminary result. Potential issues encountered during the automated processing are reported to the experimenter, which has the possibility to validate the result.