Using DVB-S2 over asymmetric heterogeneous optical to radio frequency satellite links

The DVB-S2 coding standard has seen widespread use in many radio frequency (RF) communications applications. The availability of commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) intellectual property (IP) that can be used to rapidly prototype and field communications systems makes this well-performing, standards-based approach to forward error correction (FEC) coding extremely attractive. In this paper, we evaluate the application of the DVB-S2 coding standard to an asymmetric satellite communications channel. The uplink comprises a fading optical link employing binary differential phase-shift keyed (DPSK) modulation, while the downlink comprises an RF link employing 16-ary amplitude and phase shift keyed (16-APSK) modulation. To simplify the payload implementation, hard-decision uplink demodulation is considered with uplink channel state information transmitted on the downlink for soft-decision decoding in the ground-based receiver. Additionally, we outline many of the tradeoffs in the overall system design, and some performance results of a baseline design are presented.