RF Interference Analysis

Two types of interference analysis are possible:

Satellites to antenna

When the lines of sight of two (or more) satellites to a ground station antenna are very close, within the ground station antenna beamwidth.

The antenna beamwidth can be configured individually for each antenna. The default value is 1 degree.

Antennas to satellite.

When the lines of sight of two (or more) ground station antennas to a satellite are very close, within the satellite downlink beamwidth.

The satellite downlink beamwidth is configured commonly to all satellites in Edit / Properties / Satellites / General / Beamwidth. The default value is 10 degree.

Usually EO satellites operate in the X-Band, approximately between 8.0 and 8.5 GHz. This offered almost 500 MHz bandwidth which was in the past sufficient to avoid problems of cross-satellite interference through a well designed RF Frequency assignment. Recently, with the advent of new missions, the satellites will downlink at 500 Mbps occupying the full X-Band. This puts a problem of RF interference at a Ground Station when two satellites appear to fly within the beamwidth of the Ground Station antenna. This should happen relatively seldom, but with the increase of satellites it may occur more often. It is important to identify cases of RF Interference to prevent downlink at those and avoid data loss.

To carry RF Interference analysis proceed as follows (see video demo on YouTube):

• Select the Antennas and Satellites of analysis.
• Select the Period of Analysis, and press Refresh.
• For each Antenna define its beam-width (default = 1 degree) via the Antenna properties grid.

• From the Visibilities top menu select launch Interference Analysis.
• If RF Interference events are found they will be shown on a Gantt view. This can be output to Excel, XML, etc.