Some of the largest companies in the world, like Amazon and SpaceX, seek space for the future of the Internet. Satellite Internet is an emerging enterprise, but analysts believe that broadband Internet on Earth is flowing from the orbit as a massive business could be less than 20 years old, earning hundreds of billions of dollars.
The focus has been on the ‘space’ part of ‘space internet’, with news stories focusing on rocket launches to get SpaceX’s Starlink satellites into space, and how Amazon plans to launch its own to pick up satellites. But all of these satellites will need transceivers on Earth to send and receive data. Scientists at Tokyo Institute of Technology and Socionext Inc. have a new build made to work with the next generation of internet satellites.
What are transceivers?
Unusual pieces of tech, they are some of the least flashy, but most important, components in history. A transceiver is a device that can transmit and receive signals, hence the name. Combining a transmitter and a receiver in one device provides greater flexibility and since their development in the 1920s, they have been used to reach remote locations. One of the earliest recipients, invented by the Australian John Traeger, was used to help doctors reach attainable villages.
De new transceiver
The new transceiver, designed for space Internet technology, was developed at Kenichi Okada’s lab at Tokyo Tech and presented this month at the IEEE Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits Symposium, the new device has a number of enhancements to both the sending and receiving ends of ‘ the company. All of these developments are aimed at providing internet access in rural and remote areas. At just 3 mm (0.118 inches) by 3 mm, the transceiver can communicate with satellites more than 22,000 miles above the Earth’s atmosphere.
“Satellite communications have become a key technology for delivering interactive TV and broadband Internet services in low-density rural areas. Implementing Ka-band communications using silicon – [complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor] technology in particular – is a promising solution because of its potential for low-cost global coverage and the use of the widely available bandwidth, “Okada said in a statement released by Tokyo Tech.
At the receiving end, the transceiver uses dual-channel architecture. This translates into two receiving channels that can receive signals simultaneously from two different satellites. If there has ever been any interference, whether it’s a malicious actor, a satellite intruding into space, or the strange ray of sunshine, it can easily pick up another signal.
It can also handle one of the worst problems to plague any transceiver: adjacent channel interference or ACI. ACI occurs when a signal sent on one channel begins to overload with another, adding noise and interference. The dual-channel architecture of the new transceiver can stop ACI at the source, any interference being eliminated by adjacent channels. ACI is the type of problem that can often occur in remote areas, and by eliminating it, the device can expand its range even further.
On the forward side, Okada says Inverse via email that the “drive power of the device was the biggest challenge” for the new transceiver. Not only does it have to work, but it has to be cost effective for companies like Amazon and SpaceX to show every consideration.
That means using semiconductors known for their efficiency, and transistors made from the little known compound Gallium arsenide, which has the nice acronym of GaAs. GaAs transistors are superior to their more advanced silicon in several ways, and Okada tells Inverse that getting the semiconductors and GaAs transistors to work together is “the most important technology for the design of the transceiver.”
Who helps this – It is not only on the internet in space that could benefit from the design that Okada and his team have developed. Okada tells Inverse that balloon-based internet, the type now being implemented by Alphabet’s Loon in Kenya, could also use this enhanced transceiver.
In emergencies with poor to non-existent internet, the type that Loon, Starlink, and now Amazon’s Kuiper want to solve can count every advantage. And now one of the biggest benefits would come to the fore.
Abstract: This paper presents the first Ka-band satellite communications (SATCOM) transceiver in standard CMOS technology. The proposed Ka-band SATCOM transceiver is based on architecture for direct conversion with TX with high linearity and dual-channel multi-mode RX, which is designed for a terrestrial platform that communicates with Geostationary (GEO) and low Earth orbit (LEO) the satellite. The dual channel RX enables multiple duplexing modes, namely polarization duplexing and frequency duplexing. In the receiver, both the RF path and the base path provide variable gain for a wider dynamic range. The LNA uses dual-coupling transformer for low-noise figures and broadband input. An adjacent channel interference cancellation scheme (ACI) is proposed to further improve the RX dynamic range in frequency duplex mode. In the transmitter, high-quality single-turn transformer is used to achieve matching network and four-way combination. A prototype of the SATCOM transceiver is fabricated in a standard 65-nm CMOS process. Under 1.05 V supply voltage, the transmitter achieves a PSAT of 19 dBm and an average output power of 10.6 dBm with 2% EVM and 42.9 dB ACPR. The dual-channel receiver achieves a single-bandwidth NF of 5.0 dB, IIP3 of 0.2 dBm and with a 10.4 dB ACI suppression.
read more: Mirage News: “Greater connection in remote areas: A Ka-band receiver for satellite communications”
