PROCESSING PAYLOAD AND FLEXIBLE PAYLOAD

The capabilities of satellite payloads have been increasing in complication and scale since the beginning. End‐to‐end satellite systems are converging toward seamless broadband IP‐access networks with flexible and on‐demand data transfers between satellite and terrestrial nodes This chapter describes one processing operation, aside from the subsection on digital filtering, which explains multiple operations: filtering, channelization, and frequency conversion. A digital processor in the signal path must be preceded by an analog‐to‐digital converter. Digital filtering is a fundamental operation of a digital processor. Applications include filtering, demultiplexing, multiplexing, and frequency conversion, potentially to and from baseband. For a non‐regenerative payload with digital processor, there are two types of parameters that must be dealt with differently from an all‐analog payload: repeater noise figure and filter performance.