SATELLITE AND SPACE COMMUNICATIONS

SSC

http://www.comsoc.org/socstr/org/operation/techcom/satellite.html

IEEE
COMMUNICATIONSSOCIETY
SSC Newsletter
CONTENTSSSC Committee Meetings ............................ 1
GLOBECOM 2006 SSC Activities ............. 1
How to join SSC Committee and mailing
list………………………………………….2
Officers .......................................................... 2
Message from the Chair................................ 2
Scanning the World ...................................... 3
Forthcoming ICC and GLOBECOM........... 4
Cosponsoring/Related Conferences
and Workshops.............................................. 4
Conference Calendar .................................... 5
Perspective Article ........................................ 6- JOIN US All conference attendees arewelcome to join us in the SSC
Committee meeting.
Location: Room
Florentine/Garden,
Hotel Mark Hopkins
Date: Tue. 28 November 2006
Time: 17:00 - 18:30

Future SSC Meetings
Nov. 2006 San Francisco, CA, USA
June 2007 Glasgow, Scotland, UK
Nov. 2007 Washington, D.C., USA

Vol. 16, No. 2, November 2006
The Satellite and Space Communications (SSC)
Committee is a volunteer group actively involved inadvancing satellite and space communication
technologies within the IEEE. This committee isapproved by the IEEE Communications Society andis governed by the constitution and bylaws of theIEEE as well as the other twenty TechnicalCommittees in the Society.

SATELLITE & SPACEGLOBECOM 2006 SSC Committee Activities
TUTORIALS & WORKSHOP (Nov. 27th and Dec. 1st)TECHNICAL SYMPOSIA (Nov. 28th – Nov. 30th)
SAT-01: Performance Evaluation of Satellite Communication
Systems, Wednesday, 29 Nov., 14:00–15:45.
SAT-02: Physical Layer Solutions for Satellite Communications,
Wednesday, 29 Nov., 16:15–18:00.
SAT-03: Resource Optimization in Satellite Systems,
Thursday, 30 Nov., 10:00–11:45.
SAT-04: Routing and Mobile Networking in Satellite Networks,
Thursday, 30 Nov., 14:00–15:45.
SAT-05: Solutions for Next Generation Satellite Networks,
Thursday, 30 Nov., 16:15–18:00

SSC Newsletter

HOW

TO

JOIN

SSC

COMMITTEEANDMAILING

LIST

If you like to join SSC Technical Committee: Please send your name and e-mail address to the SSC Secretary,
optionally include your mail address, telephone and fax numbers.
If you like to join SSC Mailing List: Instructions on how to subscribe/unsubscribe are available at
http://cassius.ee.usyd.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/ssc.

SSC COMMITTEE OFFICERS
CHAIR
Prof. Mario Marchese
Department of Communications,
Computer and System Science
University of Genoa
Via Opera Pia 13,
16145, Genova (Italy)
Tel. +39-010-3536571 (Office)Tel: +39-010-3532806 (Lab)Fax: +39-010-3532154
e-mail: mario.marchese@unige.it
PAST CHAIR
Prof. Abbas Jamalipour
School of Electrical & Information
Engineering
University of Sydney
Sydney NSW 2006, Australia
Tel: +61 2 9351 2843
Fax: +61 2 9351 3847
Email: a.jamalipour@ieee.org
http://www.ee.usyd.edu.au/~abbas

VICE CHAIR / EDITOR
Prof. Takaya Yamazato
Department of ElectricalEngineering and Computer Science
Nagoya University
Nagoya, 464-8603, Japan
Tel: +81-52-789-2743
Fax: +81-52-789-3173
E-mail: yamazato@ieee.org
COMMITTEE HISTORIAN
Mr. Louis Pollack
c/o Pollack Associates
15321 Delphinium Lane
Rockville, MD, USA 20853
Tel: +1 301 929 1295

Email: taylor@elec.canterbury.ac.nz

MESSAGE FROM THE CHAIR

Mario MarcheseThis is my first “Message from Chair”. I waselected during our last Meeting in Istanbul. First ofall, I would like to deeply thank the Past Chair, Prof.
Abbas Jamalipour, for his hard work within SSC TC.
I am convinced that most of the recent results wehave obtained are due to his scientific and service
skills. I hope he will continue to work with our
Committee for the benefit of the Committee itself. I
would like also to thank Prof. Takaya Yamazato and
Dr. Tarik Taleb, the new Vice-Chair and Secretary of
the Committee, respectively, for their availability. I
am sure we will work together with great strength toreach fruitful results.
The first duty of my role has been therecertification process. I sent our recertification
document to Prof. Sergio Benedetto, Vice President Technical Activities, on last September. The main
activity of the TC has concerned the dissemination of
the results produced by the Satellite and Space
Communication community. Many conferences havebeen sponsored and co-sponsored. A list with the

http://www.comsoc.org/~ssc/

SECRETARY
Dr. Tarik Taleb
Graduate School of Information
Sciences
Tohoku University
Sendai, Japan 980-8579
Tel/Fax: +81-22-795-5856
Email: talebtarik@ieee.org
http://www.aiet.ecei.tohoku.ac.jp/~
taleb
COMMITTEE ADVISOR
Dr. Desmond P. Taylor
Dept. of Electrical & Electronic
Engineering
University of Canterbury
Private Bag 4800
Christchurch, New ZealandTel: +64 3 364 2213
Fax: +64 3 364 2761

main conferences organized by SSC TC
members/sponsored by the TC/heavily involving SSC
TC Members in the TPC, has been reported in therecertification document including recent Globecom
and ICC conferences. We have our own TC
Newsletter published twice per year, distributed at
ICC and Globecom, e-mailed to TC members andposted permanently on SSC TC website. It is editedby SSC Vice-Chair and it is composed of 8 pages. It
includes a Perspective Article, which is structured inthree double columns pages, is formatted as IEEE
Communications Letters and reports a contribution of
one or more SSC Members concerning topics ofinterest for the community. It can be either a researchor a tutorial contribution.
Our Members are involved as Editors ofinternational journals and magazines: IEEE WirelessCommunications
Magazine,“ScanningtheLiterature”, International Journal of Communications
Systems (Wiley), Journal of Communications andNetworks (JCN), International Journal of Sensor-2-Vol. 16, No. 2, November 2006

SSC Newsletter
Networks, and the International Journal of Business
Data, Communications and Networking. The
following Special Issues have been organized: IEEE
Journal on Selected Areas in Communications (JSAC) in February and April 2004, on the topic of“Broadband IP Networks via Satellites” - Guest
Editors Abbas Jamalipour, Satchandi N. Verma,
Jason Neale, Mario Marchese, Haitham S.
Cruickshank; IEEE Wireless Communications Special Issue on Key Technologies and Applicationsof Present and Future Satellite Communications Guest Editors Prof. Abbas Jamalipour and Prof.
Mario Marchese, October 2005, vol. 12, no 5; IEEE
Wireless Communications – Special Issue on The
Synergy of Space and Terrestrial Communications in
Next-generation Hybrid Wireless Systems – Guest
Editors Prof. Antonio Iera, Prof. Antonella Molinaro,
Dr. Ki-Dong Lee and Dr. Apostolis Salkintzis,
October 2005, vol. 12, no 5; Publication of a Feature
Topic issue on satellite communications in December
2005, IEEE Wireless Communications Magazine (4papers); Computers and Electrical Engineering
Journal - Special Issue on Recent Advances in
Wireless Networks and Systems – Guest Editors Prof.
Mohammad Obaidat and Prof. Mario Marchese.
TC promotes the Satellite Communications
Distinguished Service Award. This award aims topromote research and development activities in thearea of satellite communications within the industry
and academia research community. The award isestablished as part of the Satellite and Space
Communications Technical Committee activities ininvolvement in the new developments taking place inthe field. The award is announced and given during
the IEEE GLOBECOM conference.
Major achievements of the TC consist in its recent
intensive activities in ICC/GC and the great scientificpush given by the TC concerning publications about
satellite communications. As a result of this hard
work, the TC could secure a symposium exclusively
devoted for research works in the area of satellite andspace communications at upcoming Globecom’06.
Despite the significant research work in the fieldof satellite and space communications, the TC
officers see that there is lack of special symposia at
ICC/GC devoted for researches on satellites. The
committee members and officers should push formore recognition of the importance of satellite
activities from the COMSOC community both in
COMSOC conferences and in COMSOC journals.
I would like to promote further the presence ofsatellite communications in IEEE main conferences,issues of journal and magazines. I strongly invite all
the Members to contribute to make the activity of our
Committee a success.
Prof. Mario Marchese, Chair
Satellite and Space Communications
Technical Committee

SCANNING THE WORLD

Takaya Yamazato

In this issue, I will introduce two Japanesesatellites projects, ETS-VIII and WINDS, and a trend
in satellite communications, software-radio in space.

parabola surface with expanding metal mesh (19m x17m), as large as the size of a tennis court. The ETSVIII will conduct orbital experiments on mobile
satellite communications and high-speed packet
communications with hand-held terminals in the Sband frequency.

ETS-VIII
Japan’s first 3-ton-classgeostationary satellite,
ETS-VIII (Engineering
Test Satellite), will belaunched on December
16, 2006, two weeks
after
Globecom2006.

WINDS
In February 2008,
WIDS(Wideband
InterNetworking
engineering test and
Demonstration
Satellite) will belaunched.
The
WINDS is equipped with Ka-band active phasedarray antenna, that makes it possible to control theantenna communication direction flexibly and rapidly,
and onboard ATM switching router, that conduct

The ETS-VIII is equipped with
two Large Deployable Antenna
Reflectors (LDRs). The LDR will
be deployed on orbit by expandingits 14 hexagonal umbrella-likemodules simultaneously forms a

http://www.comsoc.org/~ssc/-3-Vol. 16, No. 2, November 2006

SSC Newsletter
packet cell based switching up to 155Mbps x 3channels. The downlink data rate and the uplink data
rate are 155Mbps and 6Mbps respectively with asmall dish of 45cm (diameter). With 5-meter dish,1.2Gbps transmission is possible.

design and outcomes of an ongoing ARTES 1
activity.
Dr. Nozomu Nishinaga, National Institute ofInformation and Communications Technology(NICT) of Japan, is currently working on the
Reconfigurable Communication Equipment (RCE)on SmartSat-1, 200kg-class small X-band satellite
scheduled to be launched in 2009. The RCE is one of
implementations of onboard Software Defined Radio(SDR) system. Two Bread Board Models of theonboard SDR has already developed. A multi-rate
QPSK modulation and demodulation function from 2kbps to 2 Mbps is implemented using seven FPGAs.
An engineering flight model design is currently
underway. Dr. Nishinaga plans to open this on-orbit
satellite communications demonstration test bed to
the research community.

Software-radio in Space
Although the transmission rate of 1.2Gbps isimpressive, ATM switching is out of date forterrestrial switching technology. OFDM and theother advanced air-interfaces have already released tothe market. To cope with the evolution of terrestrial
transmission technology, software-radio based
regenerative processor for satellite communication is
drawing attentions.
European Space Agency (ESA) is considering anactivity to implement a prototype platform, having
demultiplexing-demodulating-decoding functionality
for a multicarrier link, using an existing multicarrier

FORTHCOMINGGLOBECOM AND
ICC CONFERENCES

Prof. Takaya Yamazato, Vice-Chair
Satellite and Space Communications
Technical Committee

COSPONSORING / RELATEDCONFERENCES AND WORKSHOPS

ICC 2007June 24 – 28, 2007, Glasgow, Scotland, UK
The Conference is aimed at addressing key themes on"SmartCommunications
Technologies
forTomorrow". The program will feature a General
Conference, ten Specific Symposia, Applications
Sessions and Tutorials. Prospective authors areinvited to submit original technical papers for oral orposter presentations at ICC 2007 and publication in
the Conference Proceedings.

MILCOM 2007
October 29 – 31, 2007, Orlando, Florida, USA
MILCOM 2007 is soliciting both unclassified andclassified papers (up to DoD Secret) relevant tocommunications and information processing systemtechnologies and capabilities that address the 21st
century challenges of National Defense, Homeland
Security, Disaster Response and Interoperability assummarized above. Industry, academic andgovernment organizations from both the US andcountries around the globe are invited andencouraged to participate.

IWSSC 2007 - 2nd Int. Workshop on Satellite andSpace Communications
September 13 – 14, 2007, Salzburg, Austria
The objective of this workshop is to provide a forum
for researchers and technologists to present new ideas
and contributions in the form of technical papers,
panel discussions and tutorials of ideas in the field ofsatellite communications. It is intended to bring
together various satellite communication systems
developers to discuss the current status, technicalchallenges, standards, fundamental issues, and futureservices and applications.
.

GLOBECOM 2007
November 26-30, 2007, Washington DC, USA
The theme of the IEEE GLOBECOM 2007
conference is "Innovate ● Educate ● Accelerate",
which exemplifies the accomplishments that we arehoping achieve during this special Globecom
Anniversary Conference. The technical program willconsist of the General Symposium, 9 TechnicalSymposia, Tutorials and Workshops, Telecom
Business Forums, Design and Developers and aStudent Program

http://www.comsoc.org/~ssc/-4-Vol. 16, No. 2, November 2006

SSC Newsletter

CONFERENCES CALENDARCONFERENCELOCATION

INFORMATIONWCNC 2007
Wireless Communications.
And Networking Conference
25th AIAA International
Communications Satellite
Systems Conference

11-15, March, 2007
Hong Kong, China

http://www.ieee-wcnc.org/

10 – 13, April 2007
Seoul, South Korea

http://www.aiaa.org/content.cfm?pageid=
230&lumeetingid=1447

ICC 2007

24-28, June 2007,
Glasgow, Scotland, UK

http://www.ieee-icc.org/2007

SPECTS 2007
16-18, July 2007,
Int. Symp.on Performance
San Diego, California ,USA
Evaluation of Computer andTelecommunication Systems
PIRMC 2007
7-11, September 2007
18th IEEE Int. Symp. On
Athens, Greece
Personal , Indoor & Mobile
Radio Communications
IWSSC 2007
13-14, September2007
3th Int. Workshop on Satellite Salzburg, Austriaand Space Communications
VTC2007 Fall
1-3, October 2007
66th IEEE Vehicular
Baltimore, USA
Technology Conference
29–31, October 2007
MILCOM 2007
Military
Communications Orlando, Florida, USA
Conference
GLOBECOM 2007
26-30, November 2007
IEEE Global Communications Washington, DC, USA
Conference

http://eia.udg.es/SPECTS2007/

http://www.pimrc2007.org/

http://iwssc2007.sbg.ac.at/index.html

http://www.ieeevtc.org/vtc2007fall/

http://www.milcom.org/2007/

http://www.comsoc.org/confs/globecom/2
007/

To all SSC members: If your postal address, telephone or fax numbers have changed, please
update them with the committee secretary. You can review our current records on our web pageat http://www.comsoc.org/~ssc/.

http://www.comsoc.org/~ssc/-5-Vol. 16, No. 2, November 2006

SSC Newsletter

PERSPECTIVE ARTICLE

November 2006

Towards the Revision of DVB-S2/RCS Standard for the Full Support of
Mobility
S. Scalise1, G.E. Corazza2 and C. Párraga Niebla1
P. Chan , G. Giambene4, F. Hu3, A. Vanelli-Coralli2 and M.A. Vázquez-Castro5
3

1

2

3

4

DLR (German Aerospace Center), University of Bologna, University of Bradford, University of Siena,
5
Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona - E-mail: Sandro.Scalise@dlr.de

Introduction
Satellite communications developed to a tremendous
global success in the field of analogue and then digitalaudio/TV broadcasting by exploiting the inherent widearea coverage for the distribution of content. It appeareda "natural" consequence to extend the satellite services
for point-to-point multimedia applications, by taking
advantage of the ability of satellite to efficiently
distribute multimedia information over very large
geographical areas and of the existing / potential large
available bandwidth in the Ku / Ka band. Particularly inEurope, due to the successful introduction of DVB-S [1],a promising technical fundament has been laid for thedevelopment of satellite communications into these newmarket opportunities using the second generation of
DVB-S [2], as well as DVB-RCS [3] standards. Thus,
for satellite systems currently under development andbeing designed to support mainly multimedia services,
the application of the DVB-S2, for the high-capacity
gateway-to-user (forward) links and of DVB-RCS for
the user-to-gateway (return) links is generally accepted.
In addition to satellite multimedia services to fixed
terminals, people are getting more and more eager tohave broadband communications on the move. Mobile
telephones subscriptions have exceeded fixed line
subscription in many countries. Higher data rates formobile devices are provided by new standards such as
UMTS, HSDPA, 1xEV-DO. New standards for mobile
broadcasting are also appearing, such as DVB-H [5].
At present, broadband access (e.g. to the Internet) anddedicated point-to-point links (for professional services)
are primarily supplied by terrestrial networks.
Broadband satcoms services are still a niche market,
especially for mobile users. In this context, manytransport operators announce the provision of TV
services in ships, trains, busses and aircraft.
Furthermore, Internet access is offered to passengers.
With IP connectivity, also radio interfaces for GSM canbe implemented for such mobile platforms by using
satellite connectivity for backhauling.
Thus, DVB-S2/RCS appears an ideal candidate to beinvestigated for mobile usage, as it can ideally combine

http://www.comsoc.org/~ssc/-6-

digital TV broadcast reception in mobile environments(AirTV, luxury yachts, trains, etc…) and IP multimedia
services.
Although an annex of RCS implementation guidelines[4] analyses the limitation under which theaforementioned standards could be used within mobile
environments, it has to be kept in mind that they havenot been designed for mobile use. Collective terminals
installed in a mobile platform, such as train, ship or
aircraft, are exposed to a challenging environment thatwill impact the system performance considering thecurrent standard in absence of any specific provision.
Mobile terminals will have to cope in general withstringent frequency regulations (especially in Ku-band),
Doppler effect, frequent handovers, and impairments insynchronizationacquisition
andmaintenance.
Furthermore, the railway scenario is affected byshadowing and fast fading due to mobility, such as deep
and frequent fades due to the presence of metallic
obstacles along electrified lines providing power to thelocomotive [6] and long blockages due to the presenceof tunnels and large train stations. This suggests thatproper fading mitigation techniques and theinterworking of satellite and terrestrial components are
essential in order to guarantee service availability.
On October 26th, 2006, the Commercial Module of
DVB (Digital Video Broadcasting) approved thecommercial requirements for the extension of DVBS2/RCS to mobile environment, thus clearing the way
for a revision of the current standards towards the full
support of mobility. The standardisation effort will first
address the so called LOS (line of sight) scenario,
namely aeronautical and maritime applications, andcover the non-LOS case (land vehicular and railway) at
a later stage.

Envisaged Enhancements and Modifications
The possibility to define a new standard fully
supporting mobility opens the way to propose
enhancements and modifications to the existing
standards that overcome the impairments of the mobile
environment in its different scenarios, althoughbackward compatibility must be kept in mind.
Vol. 16, No. 2, November 2006

SSC Newsletter• Need for Spectrum Spreading
The stringent regulations for mobile terminals in Kuband (having only secondary allocations for mobile
satellite services) require careful consideration
concerning the potential usage of spreading techniques,
especially in the return link, and particularly for
terminals with small antennas (e.g. down to 30 cm
diameter for the maritime and aeronautical cases). Thisis due to the higher interference caused by adjacentsatellites in the forward link and to the limitations about
the radiated off-axis effective isotropic radiated power(EIRP) density in the return link when antennas withlower directivity are employed. The introduction ofspectrum spreading is a possible solution to reduce the
EIRP, while preserving the required SNR, at theobvious expense of a reduced spectral efficiency. In theforward link, the introduction of spreading requires thedesign of a new DVB-S2 receiver, where despreading
anticipates the conventional blocks. In the return link,each terminal could in principle implement direct
spreading within the assigned time and frequency slot
according to the MF-TDMA approach used by DVBRCS, as already proposed and tested in the frameworkof some experimental projects carried out by ETRI in
South Korea.
• Handover Procedures
Since DVB-RCS is designed for fixed terminals, its
adaptation to the mobile environment encompasses thedefinition of a reliable handover procedure for beam,satellite and gateway handover. Terminal roaming
between different networks, and the related
interoperability issues, shall be also taken into due
account. Finally, for the non-LOS case, service
availability can be ensured in shadowed areas byinterworking with terrestrial networks, which requires
the definition of additional handover procedures
between satellite and terrestrial components, as well as
the functional architecture of dedicated terrestrial gap
fillers for some specific cases such as e.g. railway
tunnels.
• Fading Countermeasures for the non-LOS
Scenario
The more challenging propagation conditions of this
scenario can be mitigated by more advanced physicallayer solutions combined with advanced link reliability
techniques such as diversity of high layer Forward Error
Correction (FEC). Moreover, it is necessary to revisethenetwork
synchronizationacquisition
andmaintenance procedures and the forward link signallingdefined in the existing standards in order to better copewith the frequent fades.

As clearly shown in the previous section, the design ofa technically sound and reliable solution involves
several research disciplines. In this light, the Satellite
Communications Network of Excellence, SatNEx,
funded by the European Commission in the 6th
Framework Programme [7], involving a large number ofEuropean research institutions and enclosing therelevant expertise for the purpose of defining a new
DVB standard fully supporting mobility, has set up a
working group aiming at supporting this standardisation
effort.
Advanced fading countermeasures are currently being
investigated for the non-LOS case by combining
physical layer solutions, such as antenna diversity(when applicable), with upper layer FEC techniques,
following different design approaches. An additional
novelty in this investigation is the adaptive
parameterization of the selected fade countermeasuresaccording to different QoS requirements in unicast
multimedia transmissions, following a cross-layer
approach. Furthermore, SatNEx is taking the revision of
the standard as an opportunity to propose additional
enhancements not specifically linked to mobility, suchas more flexible encapsulation for the return link,
aiming at a more efficient support of IP.
Another important pillar of the SatNEx investigationis the development of efficient resource management
strategies taking into account mobility and its
implications, such as the impact of spreading in
combination with the MF-TDMA access scheme of
DVB-RCS, the possible introduction of alternative
access schemes for the support of handover events andthe interworking with terrestrial networks or dedicatedgap fillers in the land mobile and railway environments.
Furthermore, adaptive scheduling techniques for theforward link and resource allocation techniques for the
return link that are aware of the physical layer behaviour
are also investigated in a cross-layer approach.
Protocols for handover events are also being
investigated, in line with the ongoing standardisation
process of ETSI Broadband Satellite Multimedia(BSM) working group [8].
Finally, security management in mobile environments
considering different encapsulation methods, such as
Unidirectional Lightweight Encapsulation (ULE) and
Generic Stream Encapsulation (GSE) is being
investigated, inline with IETF efforts.

References
[1]

[2]

SatNEx Contribution to the UpcomingStandardisation Effort

http://www.comsoc.org/~ssc/-7-

EN 300 421 v1.1.2: Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB); Framing
structure, channel coding and modulation for 11/12 GHz satellite
services.
ETSI EN 302 307 v1.1.1: Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB):
Second generation framing structure, channel coding andmodulation system for Broadcasting, Interactive Services, News
Gathering and other broadband satellite applications.

Vol. 16, No. 2, November 2006

SSC Newsletter
[3]
[4]

[5]
[6]

[7]
[8]

ETSI EN 301 790 v1.4.1: Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB):Interaction channel for satellite distribution systems.
ETSI TR 101 790 v1.3.1: Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB):Interaction channel for satellite distribution systems; Guidelines
for the use of EN 301 790.
ETSI EN 302 304 v1.1.1: Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB);
Transmission System for Handheld Terminals (DVB-H).
S. Scalise, V. Mignone and R. Mura, “Air Interfaces forSatellite Based Digital TV Broadcasting in the Railway
Environment”, IEEE Transactions on Broadcasting, 52 (2),IEEE, pp. 158 – 166.
http://www.satnex.org
http://portal.etsi.org

http://www.comsoc.org/~ssc/-8-Vol. 16, No. 2, November 2006