"RF over IP technology has become more and more popular,"explains Eirik Rosnes. "It allows for splitting the location of the modem processing and the antenna without using verycostly dark fibre connections or having any limit on the distance between the modem site and the antenna site, both for military use and commercial satcom."
Theproject will explore advanced compression techniques ofhigh bandwidthanalogue signals for this scenario. The focus is to design and implement a bidirectional wideband RF over IP module with the target to support bandwidths up to 5 GHz. The targeteduse-case scenarios are bi-directional VSAT communication and downlink from earth observation satellites.A main challenge in the project is the design andimplementation of efficient compression algorithms of high bandwidth analogue signals, like Rice-Golomb coding and more advanced compressed sensingtechniques like Xampling.
"We are grateful to the project coordinator WideNorthAS and the European Space Agency (ESA) for funding this project, which will develop both new compression algorithms as well as an advanced test bed," says Eirik Rosnes.