Simulation Research on the Designed Physical Layer of Satellite Return Link Based on DVB-RCS2

The physical layer of satellite return link is studied in this work based on the latest version of the second generation return channel satellite for digital video broadcasting (DVB-RCS2). The satellite return link with linear modulation is designed and the experimental simulation of the burst error rate (BER) performance is carried out in this work. Based on the built satellite return link, the waveform performance that is not given in the specification is further simulated and complemented. Then, the link with direct-sequence spread as specified in the standard is simulated. The BER performance of the link with spread spectrum is compared with that of the original link The results proposes that the performance is related to the spreading factor: each time the spreading factor is doubled, the BER performance is improved by 3dB. Furthermore, experiments based on typical Rice channel are also carried out. The Rice factor is set to be 17dB referring to the specification, and the simulation results reveal narrow difference of 0.05dB compared with additional white gaussian noise (AWGN) channel. The research content of this paper will complement the waveform performance not given in the specification, fill the performance deficiency of spreading and verify the consistency of the satellite channel and the specification, which will lay a good foundation for the further research and application of the specification.