KEY PAYLOAD TECHNOLOGIES FOR FUTURE SATELLITE PERSONAL COMMUNICATIONS- A EUROPEAN PERSPECTIVE

This paper deals with satellite payload architectures adequate for the provision of universal mobile telecommunication services (UMTS) by me dium altitude earth and geostationary orbit (MEG and GEO) satellites. The payload concept introduced is based on a transparent transponder w ith onboard digital signal processing (DSP) operations and digital bea mforming at the traffic carrier level (narrowband beamforming). The em phasis of the paper is on key design aspects and technology considerat ions of the payload processor unit (PPU), which includes multiplexing/ demultiplexing and digital beamforming operations, and on the antenna and RF signal handling subsystems. For completeness, a review on the E uropean digital technology is also presented. The development of such a payload architecture is in line with present and planned activities of the European Space Agency (ESA) for MEO and GEO orbit systems, whic h are also implicitly discussed in the paper.