Bandwidth efficient channel spacing for on board processing satellite communications-simulation results

MILSATCOM systems of the future will take advantage of advances in digital processing to support diverse terminal populations. Systems that support a range of terminal sizes must accommodate the range of received signal strengths that may be expected from the terminal population. Whenever possible, the channel spacing must be flexible enough to support a range of burst rates. The Advanced EHF (AEHF) system is being designed to support users that operate at a wide range of burst rates and signal power levels. The signal processing scheme proposed for the AEHF system allows for bandwidth efficient channel spacing of the uplink channels. This channel spacing supports a number of low burst rate users in the same bandwidth required for a single high burst rate user. This paper is a follow-on to Maleski et al. (1998) which describes a method of processing the AEHF uplink channels. This paper presents the results of a simulation performed on AEHF uplink communications and acquisition channels. The simulation is used to verify the performance of AEHF uplink channels and investigate the effects of noise and adjacent channel interference. The results of this paper are applicable to digitally processed satellite communications systems that must support a terminal population that includes low power users.