At 11:28 PM 3/23/2007, Patrick McGrane wrote:
Greetings from pat n2oeq
I have been looking forward to the launch of P3E which I thought was going to be this year. I am concerned about the germans use of the SDR technology over william Liejanier's transponder design. I am of the belief that signal processing presents a loss in the path, please correct me if I'm wrong.
Why would it be a loss? SDR represents an opportunity to improve the passband characteristics, and increase the dynamic range of the transponder, as well as make other tweaks. Depending on the design, there is also the potential to upload new passband characteristics and tweak the transponder while it's in space (sort of the equivalent to hitching a ride on a rocket and making a few tweaks :) ).
Williams Hamsat transponder is excellant and made me very interested in P3E. Besides making the voice unnatural, are other modes allowed through the SDR transponder?
Why would a SDR make voice unnatural? All the SDR is doing is replacing the traditional analog filters with digital ones, which gives much steeper skirts. The DSP also offers the opportunity to deal with alligators and maybe even dynamically share the transponder power equally between all stations.
Does the Helaps system compensate for the loss?
HELAPS is a high efficiency linear PA. Needed, regardless of whether the transponder is analog or digital.
I'm of the Keep it simple discipline as once its up there nothing can be done to fix it.
On the other hand, what the system offers is the potential to dynamically configure the passband. Got non ham QRM sucking power from part of the passband? Just notch it out, for example.
While it is good to have old style analog transponders available as a standby, we do need to look to the future and embrace new technology. What is the point of spending millions and occupying our bands to put up another satellite with 1970's RF technology, when there are experiments we can fly using the latest technology? I have nothing against a tried and true analog transponder as a backup (if space and weight constraints permit, that's prudent), but I do like to see new technology used as well.
73 de VK3JED http://vkradio.com