Meteor burst link and network simulator

Abstract

SIGNATRON, Inc., under contract to Rome Air Development Center, has developed a meteor burst linkhetwork simulator to facilitate the testing of the next generation meteor scatter communication equipment and terminals. With the capability to interface to 15 terminals configured into an arbitrary network with up to 30 independent links, the simulator will have significant flexibility to test a variety of network architectures. In addition, the 400 kHz simulator bandwidth provides transparency to different modulations at data rates from 75 bls to 128 kbls independent of waveform design. This paper describes the design of the simulator including the channel modeling, the multiplexing of the hardware to serve all desired links, and the simulator control. A number of the potential applications of the simulator in future testing of modems, protocols, terminals and networks will also be presented.programs are often lengthy and sometimes inconclusive. Analysis and software simulations can be used in the design phase to predict performance before equipment is built; however, the actual hardware must be exercised to evaluate performance.For many years, hardware channel simulators have been used for the testing of HF, VHF and troposcatter communication equipment [2, 3,4]. The simulators provide realistic channel conditions with which to test equipment in the laboratory under repeatable and controllable conditions. Often, performance with the channel simulator has become the measure of system performance. For tests of wide-band systems in which frequency allocations are difficult to obtain, real time channel simulation provides an essential tool for proof of concept. Figure 1 shows how a real time channel simulator is used to test communication system performance. Channel 1. 40.4.1.