Hardware performance and experimental results of portable digital SNG equipment using a flat antenna

We have developed a Ku-band portable digital satellite news gathering (SNG) RF terminal and evaluated the hardware performance through experiments. This SNG RF terminal employs a 16-planar microstrip subarray antenna and an electronic antenna beam tracking circuit. The dimensions for the flat antenna are 60 cm by 60 cm. The terminal can promptly capture the satellite and transmit the video at 15-Mbps, 11-Mbps, and 7-Mbps coding rates. After satellite transmission experiments, we confirmed the stable transmission of a QPSK signal. This paper first describes the system configuration. It then shows the experimental results of the hardware performance such as antenna beam tracking performance and the radiation patterns. Finally, it shows the results of satellite transmission experiments of TV pictures. From these experimental results it is verified that (1) within the tilt angle of ±3 degrees, the off axis e.i.r.p. density level of the terminal is less than the technical standard specified in the ITU-R Recommendation 524; and (2) the SNG stably transmits TV programs and has a sufficient C/N margin of about 3 dB, 5 dB or 7 dB for the respective video coding rates of 15 Mbps, 11 Mbps, and 7 Mbps