The PCE-600 from ECA Group is a 600 MHz Propagation Channel Emulator capable of testing and measuring the end-to-end performance of a transmission system (from the base station to the transmitters through the payload of the satellite), in a lab environment, by simulating real radio conditions. It can operate under various environmental conditions.
While it is designed to suit the needs of single beam satellite system emulation, the PCE 600 supports multi-beam systems limited to two groups of terminals. The FLE (forward link emulator) and RLE (return link emulator) versions allow extended emulation of multi-beam systems with 4 groups of terminals. Dynamic colored noise (limited to multi-beam RLE and FLE models) can be used to emulate frequency re-use interferences in multi-beam systems.
The PCE-600 integrates the following tools to meet industry requirements:
- For modeling the phenomena of signal propagation (Doppler effect, Propagation delay, Fading, scintillation, etc.)
- The effects of RF system degradation (Phase noise for ground and payload, RF filters for satellite IMUX and OMUX payload, Amplifiers None-linearity and Amplifier Adaptive Level Control for satellite payload, Multipath, Antenna effects)
- Interference (Interferers and jammers)
The IMUX and OMUX filters of PCE-600 are based on complex FIR filters and the non-linearity of the amplifier has been improved with interpolation up to 1.8 GHz of instant bandwidth to avoid aliasing. It offers a wideband carrier generation (up to 225MHz) for co-channel and adjacent channel interferences. The PCE-600 is available in a single 4U case and is suitable for use in satellite system integration test bench, modem validation, satellite payload testing, earth mobile communication testing, failure and degradation, investigation and diagnostic and satellite system deployment.
