Adaptive Satellite Demodulation for Priority Message Delay Control
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing satellite communication systems for Low Earth Orbital (LEO) constellations face challenges in providing real-time services while optimizing for power consumption, memory requirements, and bandwidth, especially when dealing with high-priority and low-priority messages, and managing interference from uncorrelated terminals.
Innovation Solution
An adaptive demodulation system that prioritizes on-board demodulation of high-priority messages for short-delay transmission and delegates lower-priority message demodulation to ground stations, utilizing high-gain antenna arrays efficiently to manage communication with small terminals.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Loss of time
If all messages are demodulated on-board the satellite, then real-time service is ensured, but processing power consumption and memory requirements increase significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the demodulation process by priority level. High-priority messages are demodulated on-board the satellite to ensure real-time delivery, while low-priority messages are stored and demodulated later on the ground. This segmentation allows the system to meet real-time requirements for critical messages without overwhelming the satellite's limited processing resources.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent applies partial action by performing demodulation only for high-priority messages on-board, rather than all messages. This partial processing approach ensures that time-critical operations are completed in-orbit while avoiding the excessive power consumption that would result from processing all messages on the satellite.
2Reliability
If all received samples are stored in on-board memory, then complete signal archiving is achieved, but memory requirements and feeder link capacity increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts only the essential information (high-priority messages) from the received signal for on-board storage and processing. Non-essential low-priority messages are not stored on the satellite, thereby reducing memory requirements and feeder link capacity while maintaining reliability for critical communications.
3Productivity
If high-gain antenna arrays are used to communicate with small terminals, then link efficiency improves, but on-board processing complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the communication tasks by terminal priority and message importance. High-gain antenna arrays are deployed specifically for communicating with high-priority small terminals, while lower-priority communications use different resources. This segmentation enables efficient use of the high-gain antenna without requiring complex processing for all terminal types.
Data Source
Figure 1A~1B
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AI summary
An aspect of the invention concerns a method (100) for processing a signal received from at least one terminal during a given time interval, called current time interval, said method being performed on-board by a satellite; said satellite comprising a memory and means for processing data contained in said memory. The method comprises a step (1R1) of receiving, during the current time interval, a signal, said main signal, containing at least one message from at least one terminal, each message having a priority level; a step (1S1) of sampling said main signal to obtain samples; a step (1S2) of storing the obtained samples into the satellite memory; a step (1 D1) of demodulating the messages corresponding to the current time interval contained in the samples stored in memory; when the satellite is in the range of a ground station, a step (1T1) of transmitting to said ground station the content of the memory. The demodulation step (1D1) comprises, for each message of the messages contained in the samples and by priority order: a sub-step (1D11) of demodulation and decoding the message; a sub-step (1D12) of forwarding, using direct link or inter-satellite-link, the demodulated message to a ground station; a sub-step of estimating the number of remaining non-demodulated messages in the samples stored in the memory; if there are no remaining messages, a sub-step of deleting the samples in the satellite memory. The demodulation sub-steps are repeated until there is not enough processing power.