Satellite Communication Prototype Based on SDR

Abstract

The railways industry is at the moment looking for innovations and solutions supporting their core business and increasing the capacity of the rail system. One aspect is the development of a new communication system that improves shortcomings at the European Train Control System (ETCS) with an adaptable multi-bearer train-to-ground communications system. The idea is to increase the capacity and improve the availability of the communication system by using multiple bearers or providers like, 5G, LTE, WiFi or SatCom. Testing these solutions can become cumbersome since multiple networks must be set up and especially in the SatCom case there are multiple options for bearers. SDR offers a solution for this: the bearer can be implemented in software and adapted if needed to model other technologies. We present here a prototype design that modules a satellite channel and can be used to model a satellite bearer.