6.9 Communications Analysis and Link Budget

“the following video is a duplicate video also found in section 6.7”

“You will also need the following information that you and your customer can supply [Bill Sepmeier]:

• Latitude and longitude of the uplink and downlink earth stations.
• Planned data or information rate.
• Modulation type (BPSK or QPSK)
• Forward error correction rate (1/2 or 3/4)
• Spread Factor – if any (use only for spread spectrum systems)
• Uplink and Downlink frequencies.
• Uplink and Downlink antenna sizes.
• Uplink and Downlink antenna efficiency.
• Uplink and Downlink transmit and receive gains at frequency.
• Minimum digital signal strength (EB/No) for desired Bit Error Rate (BER) performance.

Once the above information is available, it is a simple matter to plug the data into the spreadsheet and calculate the link budget.”

Link budget calculators for both an RF and an optical communications system:

• https://www.satsig.net/linkbugt.htm
• http://www.satcoms.org.uk/satellite-link-budget-calculator.asp
• https://www.tutorialsweb.com/satcom/satellite-link-budget-calculator.htm
• https://spacegrant.colorado.edu/COSGC_Projects/co3sat/downloads/CS1-COM100.03%20AMSAT%20IARU%20Link%20Budget.xls
• https://cedarweb.vsp.ucar.edu/wiki/images/7/75/Cubesat_Link-Budget.xls
• https://www.maximintegrated.com/content/dam/files/design/tools/tech-docs/5142/AN5142-link-budget.xls
• https://www.rfwireless-world.com/downloads/RF-Link-Budget.xlsx
• https://sourceforge.isae.fr/projects/satlinktool-a-tool-for-analysing-geo-satcom/wiki/Link_Budget

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