Chapter 6.

Theory of Operation

Functional Description

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Offset QPSK Operation

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EIA-232 Operation

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AUPC (Automatic Uplink Power Control)

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6.1FUNCTIONAL DESCRIPTION

The CiM-550 has two fundamentally different types of interface - IF and data. The data interface is a bi-directional path which connects with the customer’s equipment (assumed to be the DTE) and the modem (assumed to be the DCE). The IF interface provides a bi- directional link with the satellite via the uplink and downlink equipment.

Transmit data is received by the terrestrial interface where line receivers convert the clock and data signals to CMOS levels for further processing. A small FIFO follows the terrestrial interface to facilitate the various clocking and framing options. If framing is enabled, the transmit clock and data output from the FIFO pass through the framer, where the EDMAC data is added to the main data. Otherwise, the clock and data are passed directly to the Forward Error Correction encoder. In the FEC encoder, the data is differentially encoded, scrambled, and then convolutionally encoded.

Following the encoder, the data is fed to the transmit digital filters, which perform spectral shaping on the data signals. The resultant I and Q signals are then fed to the QPSK/BPSK modulator. The carrier is generated by a frequency synthesizer, and the I and Q signals directly modulate this carrier to produce an IF output signal.

The received IF signal is first translated to a fixed IF frequency, using a frequency synthesizer. An AGC circuit maintains the composite level within the IF bandwidth constant over a limited range. Following this, the signal is sampled by a high-speed (flash) A/D converter. All processing beyond this conversion is purely digital. The signal is translated down to near zero frequency by a complex mix, and then is processed by a digital Costas Loop, which performs the functions of Nyquist filtering, carrier recovery, and bit-timing recovery. The resultant demodulated signal is fed, in soft decision form, to the FEC decoder (Viterbi, Sequential or Turbo, and Reed-Solomon, if installed).

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