This paper presents technologies which are key candidates for advanced on‐board processing for future communication satellites. Satellite switching centres for microwave and baseband signals, on‐board coherent modems for 120Mb/s burst‐mode TDMA systems and their technologies are discussed. A brief description of on‐board demultiplexing and demodulation of low bit rate carriers is offered and study results on investigation of on‐board unique word detectors and large buffers are presented.
The UNICODEC, developed under the INTELSAT R & D Program, is a TV codec which can transmit and receive any standard signal of NTSC, PAL, or SECAM, by using 15 Mb/s or 30 Mb/s transmission rates (switchable) with two high quality sound channels and one voice circuit. These rates include rate 239/255 BCH FEC for video information. The codec uses the 4:2:2 digital interface for component coding based on CCIR Recommendation 601.
The UNICODEC can provide the flexibility to deal with the composite coding now needed in mixed analogue/digital networks, but can also handle either composite NTSC, PAL, SECAM or MAC (multiplexed analogue components), or digital component signals (Y, R‐Y, B‐Y) in the future.
The key technique used here is called MAP (median adaptive prediction) coding, which is one of the adaptive DPCM methods for accurate and simple control in high quality TV transmission; one prediction out of three (interframe, intrafield or interfield) is transmitted without the need for many control bits. There is also a refresh mode for burst error or synchronization recovery. The UNICODEC is expected to provide double capacity with higher quality pictures compared to conventional analogue transmission (FM in 18 MHz). Alternatively, smaller size antennas may be used.
This paper describes the objectives of the development of the UNICODEC, its main features and results of field tests.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.