The Ground Segment Channel Emulator is a comprehensive and configurable instrument for emulation of the impairments which affect the telecommunication in space applications.
The Ground Segment Channel Emulator emulates Additive White Guassian Noise (AWGN) and Doppler effect caused by the communication channel, and also phase noise and non-linear distortion introduced by the transmitter unit. In particular, the Doppler effect emulates the change in relative velocity between transmitter and receiver, the phase noise emulator is dedicated to non-idealities of transmitter local oscillators, and the non-linear distortion section reproduces the effects of the transmitter power amplifier. The analog input signal is converted into digital domain, it is elaborated with digital signal processing algorithms emulating the different impairments contributions, and then it is converted back to the analog domain for the output.
The Ground Segment Channel Emulator can be configured, controlled and monitored remotely with a GUI or with dedicated API through Ethernet interface by means of external host PC.
The Ground Segment Channel Emulator has been developed within the framework of an ESA project.