Mobile Communications

The ROBMOD Project

Robust Modulation & Coding for Personal Communications Systems (ROBMOD), aimed at defining and validating a candidate approach for the satellite component of 3rd-generation mobile system (S-UMTS)

Subcontactors:

Ascom (Switzerland), CoRiTel (Italy), IMST (Germany), Politecnico di Torino (Italy), SquarePeg Comms Inc. (Canada), Universit Roma Tor Vergata (Italy)

Main Outcomes

Physical Layer Specifications: ESA submitted the ITU an S-UMTS standardisation proposal for a CDMA-based access: SW-CDMA: pure CDMA solution S-CTDMA: CDMA/TDMA solution Test Bed: comprehensive hardware facility representative of the SWCDMA physical layer. The Test Bed models a complete bi-directional Gateway Terminal satellite link, featuring:

multi-satellite diversity and satellite / spot-handoffs with coherent combining channel simulation (path delay, Doppler, variable link attenuation, user-defined propagation channel, etc.) including interference
3

Test Bed
NFSE
GW FUNCTIONS ASSY (GWFA) GW MODEM ASSY (GWMA) CHANNEL SIMULATOR ASSY (CSA) MT MODEM ASSY (MTMA) MT FUNCTIONS ASSY (MTFA) MTHCU

GW-side application interface

GWHCU

GWISU

IMDU

GWMU GWDIU GWDU GWCCU

FLCSU RLCSU

MTDU MTDIU MTMU MTCCU

MT-side application interface

MTISU

PLSE

TBCE
PIU MMIU DSPU DSMMIU

TEST BED CONTROL ASSY (TBCA)

DYNAMIC SIMULATOR ASSY (DSA)

traffic + control / signaling path control path

ATB Project

ESA contract Advanced S-UMTS Test Bed (ATB), aimed at defining and validating solutions for the packet and the multicast mode is an S-UMTS context. Contract develops over two Phases:
Subcontactors:

Alcatel Bell Space (Belgium), Alenia Spazio (Italy), Ascom (Switzerland), RAI (Italy), SkySoft (Portugal), Telespazio (Italy)

S-UMTS System Design

Space Engineering is currently supporting Alenia Spazio in the definition of an operational S-UMTS system Two ESA contracts: S-UMTS Preparatory Activity (completed) S-UMTS Bridging Phase (on-going)

Main Space Engineering involvement:

simulations for system capacity assessment payload architectures (transparent, OBP, digital beam forming both on-board and on-ground) ground segment architectures

Other team members: Accenture (Italy), Astrium (Germany), Elsacom (Italy), Omnitel (Italy), Radiolinja (Finland), Telit (Italy)
6

VIRTUOS Project

VIRTUOUS demonstrates the first step of the migration path towards UMTS, in which 3G users will still use 2G-compatible terminals
VIRTUOUS demonstrator includes a real GPRS network and hardwareemulated T-UMTS and S-UMTS access networks. Main Space Engineering roles:

system studies implementation of both the T-UMTS and S-UMTS physical layers

Other Partners: Telespazio (coordinator, Italy), Ascom (Switzerland), EBA (Italy), Siemens (Austria), Telefonica (Spain), Tilab (Italy), University of Aachen (Germany), University of Rome La Sapienza (Italy)
7

GAUSS Project

GAUSS aims at designing and demonstrating a realistic integration concept between navigation and communications systems adapted to support the type of communications services being considered for Galileo (i.e. bursty, packet-based services). Service demonstration will be carried out over an existing satellite Main Space Engineering role is: to perform system studies to contribute in the demonstrator access system implementation to realize a digital receiver front-end common to COM and NAV
Partners: Telespazio (coordinator, Italy), ARNI (Italy), Ascom (Switzerland), Ericsson (Italy), GMV (Spain), Thales (France), Telefonica (Spain), TTI (Spain)
8

FUTURE Project

Follow-on of VIRTUOUS, mainly intended to:

design a UMTS multimedia subsystem based on Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), to offer real-time multimedia services. Implementation of a SIP Client and a SIP Proxy, to support end-to-end Quality of Service

demonstration of "QoS guaranteeing functions", e.g. Connection Admission Control (CAC) in a via-satellite context supporting multicasting and packet services

Space Engineering involvement is the same as in VIRTUOUS

Partners: Telespazio (coordinator, Italy), EBA (Italy), Ericsson (Greece), Integrasys (Spain), Siemens (Austria), Telefonica (Spain), University of Aachen (Germany), University of lAquila (Italy)
9

Other EC-funded Projects

Two proposals are currently retained for final negotiation:

Project XXX : define and demonstrate, by means of a demonstrator having both terrestrial and satellite access facilities, a mobile service scenario encompassing location-based value-added services, rich multimedia and Geographical Information (GI) contents Project YYY: identify, design and demonstrate new services, upon an integrated T/S-UMTS network. The software-based emulator of both the Core Network and the Access Networks will permit to carry out a Fully IP Based Core Network experiment and an Access Network Resources Optimisation experiment
10

Space Engineering roles: system studies, simulations and implementations