Satellite and Aerospace Channel
Emulation Toolset
S8825A
Contents
Chapter 1
Validate the Real-World Performance
of 5G NTN Technology
Chapter 2
Solutions for New Test Challenges
Chapter 3
Create Realistic Test Scenarios for
Aerospace Propagation Conditions
Chapter 4
Emulate Doppler, Delay and Range Rate
in a Laboratory
Chapter 5
Application Scenarios
Chapter 6
Key Features
Chapter 7
Ready to Take the Next Step?
CHAPTER 1
Validate the Real-World Performance of
5G NTN Technology
Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7
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Today’s complex communication systems are under development to meet
the growing levels of broadband data in aerospace, satellite, and airborne 5G NTN Solution Testing
applications. One of the main driving factors is converging the cellular and The introduction of 5G NTN
satellite networks and introducing the non-terrestrial networks (NTN) in shifts the focus of satellite
communication (SATCOM)
5G. For 6G and beyond, the relevance of satellite links becomes essential
into testing with multi-chan-
in quantum communications. nel transfer and multiple
transponders per satellite.
A failure in a communication link can lead to the loss of life-critical The convergence of terres-
data, which is why aerospace, satellite, and airborne radio devices trial and aerospace networks
need to meet stringent reliability requirements. It is often challenging is becoming an essential part
of cellular service. The need
and expensive to virtually repair aerospace and satellite-type devices.
for bandwidth is growing,
Therefore, it is crucial to emulate the various phenomena that may affect a and so is the number of
radio device in its real-world environment. This process is the only way to satellites.
guarantee the reliability of the communication links and radio systems.
Keysight’s S8825A Satellite
and Aerospace Channel
Emulation Toolset offers
industry-leading features that
fulfill the high demands of
today’s SATCOM testing.
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CHAPTER 2
Solutions for New Test Challenges
Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7
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Keysight’s S8825A Satellite and Aerospace Channel Emulation Toolset
provides the foundation for covering the most advanced test requirements.
Testing in a controlled laboratory environment using a vast range of use
case scenarios provides wireless communications systems’ developers a
reliable and cost-effective solution for testing air-to-air and air-to-ground
communication links.
The laboratory setup allows air and space applications to experience actual
environmental conditions, such as high Doppler, long delays, high dynamic
range variations, power amplifier-related impairments, and phase noise.
The S8825A Satellite and Aerospace Channel Emulation Toolset combines
Keysight’s PROPSIM channel emulator with its aerospace channel
emulation engine (ACE) to test aerospace, satellite, and airborne radio
systems in a laboratory environment (Figure 1). The advanced functionalities
include the mixed-use of cellular links combined with long delay aerospace
links, enabling the implementation of test scenarios for 5G NTN.
Figure 1. F8800A PROPSIM F64 and F8820A PROPSIM FS16 channel emulators
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The PROPSIM channel emulator enables real-time emulation of wireless
radio channels. With the most superior signal integrity in the industry,
PROPSIM’s file-based emulation of test scenarios guarantees accurate,
realistic, and repeatable test conditions for wireless aerospace, telemetry,
satellite, and mobile broadband communication applications.
With the S8825A Satellite and Aerospace Channel Emulation Toolset, you
can integrate an advanced terrestrial channel emulator with a satellite
channel emulator to form one compact and affordable unit. Create realistic
real-time propagation test environments for aerospace, satellite, and
airborne radio links testing to:
• Test radios in aerospace, airborne, terrestrial, and indoor propagation
environments including mixed-use cases of different types of solutions.
• Test full satellite constellations and massive low Earth orbit (LEO).
• Create test environments that meet requirements for the highest levels
of Doppler and acceleration.
• Emulate store and forward type links, power amplifier non-linearity, and
phase noise of satellite hardware.
The S8825A Satellite and Aerospace Channel Emulation Toolset provides
you the highest levels of channel emulation performance and accuracy
available on the market. You can easily test airborne gateway links and
cellular communication such as LTE and 5G New Radio (NR) with a
single instrument.
The result is the most reliable and cost-effective solution for radio channel
testing to:
• Provide realistic end-to-end conditions for testing communication
networks and network interlinking.
• Minimize overall testing costs and shorten development time by
reducing the need for field testing.
• Achieve smooth interoperability between different systems.
• Improve the quality of service and end-user experience.
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Resolve issues early in the development process
By identifying issues at an early stage in the development process, the
PROPSIM channel emulator ensures your products are more mature and
have fewer errors before field verification. This type of approach accelerates
cycles and significantly reduces your development and testing costs.
Some applications in locations that are difficult to get to, are challenging
to test in the field. The accurate and precise laboratory test environment
created by PROPSIM enables you to initiate performance testing of early
prototypes that are not yet ready for testing in a real environment. As
a laboratory-based test solution, the PROPSIM channel emulator is a
flexible, cost-effective, and reliable alternative to time-consuming and
expensive field-based testing.
Improve system integration
Use the operational environment emulated by PROPSIM during the
system integration phase to verify the functionality of various parts of
a system in any given condition. The verification against conditions is
critical when various organizations execute development projects due
to harmonizing the test conditions. Get guaranteed end-product quality
verification for each subsystem to comply with agreed specifications. The
operational lifecycle of satellite and airborne radio systems is longer than
that of commercial radios. The S8825A Satellite and Aerospace Channel
Emulation Toolset ensures the compatibility of new components before
installation into a live system.
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CHAPTER 3
Create Realistic Test Scenarios for
Aerospace Propagation Conditions
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The PROPSIM aerospace channel emulation engine lets you create
realistic aerospace propagation conditions for different test scenarios
(Figure 2). The tool’s graphical editing functionality makes it easy to
visualize stationary and moving objects, observe the link conditions, and
process the PROPSIM test scenarios.
Real environment Emulated environment
Figure 2. Bring real-world radio channel conditions into the lab with the S8825A Satellite
and Aerospace Channel Emulation Toolset
With the S8825A Satellite and Aerospace Channel Emulation Toolset, you
can test more efficiently at the critical points in your procedure and rely on
the accuracy and reliability of the results.
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Create aerospace and satellite scenarios
You can easily create aerospace and satellite scenarios using the
Aerospace Model Editor (ASO) editor tool or data import functions. The
ASO editor supports the creation of dynamic multipath scenarios. It
provides a file interface to enable the import of customer-specific data
from third-party scenario tools. PROPSIM delivers seamless integration
with the AGI systems tool kit (STK) (Figure 3).
Figure 3. Keysight’s PROPSIM channel emulator provides seamless integration with the
AGI STK software
Define the test setup
The editor tool allows linking and connecting multiple radios into one
scenario. It also enables adding additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN)
interference sources for each channel independently if necessary. All the
device interconnections can be freely defined in the software by the user.
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Run the model in the emulator
Time and RF phase-coherent results are guaranteed and repeatable due
to PROPSIM’s single-unit integrated platform architecture (Figure 4).
Storing the emulations in a file-based format ensures the repeatability of
testing and guarantees consistent results between test executions.
Create scenario Define test setup Run model on PROPSIM
• distance • n umber of radios • h ard-in-a-loop testing
• speed • frequency • r eal-time signaling with
• Doppler shift • link budget real hardware
• route / mobility • AWGN, CW • repeatable file-based
emulation
• power delay profile • interference signals
• r emote control of
• terrain
emulation parameters
Figure 4. Test at key points in your process with the PROPSIM aerospace modeling tool
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CHAPTER 4
Emulate Doppler, Delay and Range Rate
in a Laboratory
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The PROPSIM aerospace channel emulation engine integrates with the
wideband fading emulator F8800A PROPSIM F64 or F8820A PROPSIM
FS16. The process enables you to emulate aerospace and terrestrial
channels in a single device using advanced channel modeling tools,
standard model libraries, and MIMO emulations up to 8x8.
Multichannel emulation capability
The S8825A Satellite and Aerospace Channel Emulation Toolset
can emulate scenarios where a wide range of different applications
communicate with each other or where several systems use the same
radio channels. The communicating devices may be point-to-point or
point-to-multipoint. The tested applications may contain for instance high-
speed data, broadcasting, radar, jamming, or counter jamming.
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Accurate aerospace channel emulation
Get realistic emulation of all relevant radio channel phenomena using the
S8825A Satellite and Aerospace Channel Emulation Toolset. This solution
includes emulating long delay satellite links with realistic Doppler based on
the satellites’ movement. The high dynamic range enables realistic path
loss and link power variations.
High Doppler
The Doppler shift is proportional to the velocity and carrier frequency in
use. PROPSIM channel emulator with the aerospace channel emulation
engine independently emulates Doppler phenomena for each channel’s
path while consistently maintaining the phase continuity in dynamic delay
variations. The procedure preserves realistic chip rate variations, which
are necessary when testing satellite receiver performance.
Long delays
Compared to terrestrial links, aerospace links generally have longer
link spans. Precise emulation of delay is essential in ranging telemetry
applications. Extreme accuracy is a requirement in many applications,
such as object guidance or tracking, because it is crucial to know the
device’s location at the time when the signal was transmitting to estimate
its new location. PROPSIM channel emulator with the aerospace channel
emulation engine emulates delays and positions between moving objects
and reflectors with extremely high accuracy.
Range rate
High range rate creates dynamic effects on radio link amplitude, delay,
and Doppler. Depending on the application, the rate range can be
function-based, linear, sinusoidal, or completely arbitrary.
For example, the PROPSIM aerospace channel emulation engine
accurately and synchronously emulates radio links when a fighter aircraft
changes direction and acceleration, causing sudden changes in Doppler,
delay, and amplitude values to ± 1.5 MHz maximum Doppler and up to
100G acceleration.
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CHAPTER 5
Application Scenarios
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Tactical data links
Military communications networks use tactical data links for
communication between aircraft, ships, and ground platforms. Tactical
data links are capable of providing secure and jam-resistant high
throughput connections over relatively long distances.
Figure 5. Emulate real-world tactical data links in the lab with the S8825A Satellite and
Aerospace Channel Emulation Toolset
Commercial aviation
Broadband data to commercial aircraft transmits and receives through
ground stations. Situations similar to a terrestrial cellular network occur at
higher velocities and over longer distances.
Figure 6. The S8825A Satellite and Aerospace Channel Emulation Toolset provides full
support for the high requirements of avionics communication testing
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Satellite communications
The accuracy in modeling path loss, delay, Doppler, and multipath plays a
vital role in evaluating satellite service coverage and quality. The S8825A
Satellite and Aerospace Channel Emulation Toolset provides the required
accuracy for any system-level evaluation. The PROPSIM channel emulator
can handle network-level connections, such as 5G NTN system-level
integration, to reveal any subsystem performance shortages.
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CHAPTER 6
Key Features
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Superior RF and digital performance
The S8825A Satellite and Aerospace Channel Emulation Toolset has a
channel modeling interface with up to 64 RF channels and up to 1200 MHz
signal bandwidth. RF signal frequency range of 30 MHz to 6 GHz reduces
the need for RF down / up conversion. However, systems operating on
up to 100 GHz are supported with external RF down / up conversion
hardware. This solution provides propagation delay emulation capability of
up to 1000 ms.
Specifications
Capability / feature F8820A PROPSIM FS16 F8800A PROPSIM F64
Number of radio
2 to 16 channels 8 to 64 channels
channels
Number of digital 256 terrestrial 1024 terrestrial
channels 16 aerospace 64 aerospace
EVM < -50 dB < -50 dB
Doppler shift ± 1.5 MHz ± 1.5 MHz
Maximum delay 1000 ms (1s) 1000 ms (1s)
1200 MHz 1200 MHz
Maximum bandwidth
(1000 MHz ACE) (1000 MHz ACE)
3 MHz to 6 GHz 3 MHz to 6 GHz
Frequency range
(30 MHz to 6 GHz ACE) (30 MHz to 6 GHz ACE)
Internal interference AWGN, CW AWGN, CW
F8820A F8800A
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Open text-based file format
The PROPSIM aerospace channel emulation engine supports any user-
defined routes or built-in functions for periodic models. The open text-based
file format enables importing customer-specific radio channel and location
parameters for satellite orbital information or any airborne route information.
This solution takes input from software, scenario creation, and simulation
tools. You can easily define and emulate the communications links of flight
routes or test the wireless connection on an aircraft with link emulations
based on virtual links or recorded link databases.
The PROPSIM aerospace channel emulation engine enables you to create
and edit various types of channel models with periodic curves.
Coordinate-based model Function-based model Arbitrary model
• Define coordinate • Specify Doppler from • Define time stamped
points and gain values the linear, sinusoidal, values for the
for the transmitter, or triangular function. transmitter / receiver
receiver, and reflectors. • Set minimum and link characteristics,
• Calculate delay, range maximum values for with:
rate, and Doppler gain. - Doppler
parameters from the - Delay
movement between
- Gain
given coordinate
points.
Visualization
The PROPSIM aerospace channel emulation engine enables you to create
and illustrate user-defined emulation models. The visualization of the links
between transceivers and receivers comes from the locations of the radios
and multipath reflectors. The graphs display the channel parameter changes
according to the defined scenario.
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Validation
You can import the scenario data to the PROPSIM in Keysight’s .aso file
format. It is easy to check the integrity of the imported data to validate the
model format and data values. The input data from third party tools can
also easily be modified to fit into the channel emulator.
Replay
The playback functionality enables viewing the model evolution as a
time series demonstration and repeats as many times as needed. For
example, you can create a radio channel environment once and replay it
in the laboratory to improve the live wireless network’s performance and
functionality at different cruising altitudes.
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CHAPTER 7
Ready to Take the Next Step?
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Keysight’s S8825A Satellite and Aerospace Channel Emulation Toolset
delivers advanced and cost-efficient performance assessment of satellite
and ground networks for the expanding satellite communications market.
Our industry-leading performance validation solutions enable the
aerospace industry to capitalize on opportunities to establish commercial
success and deliver innovative technology breakthroughs in space
exploration, scientific research, and satellite communications.
Keysight can tailor PROPSIM solutions to fit your requirements. This
flexibility ensures you get what you need to finish the task. The PROPSIM
platform’s scalability makes it a future-proof solution as your requirements
change.
For more information about Keysight’s PROPSIM F64 and FS16, visit
keysight.com/find/propsim.
Learn more about Keysight’s PROPSIM aerospace testing at
keysight.com/find/s8825a.
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This information is subject to change without notice. © Keysight Technologies, 2016 - 2021, Published in USA, August 5, 2021, 5992-1606EN
