What is Super-Frame Format 4?

Christian Rohde and Holger Stadali, from the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits (Erlangen, Germany), Javier Perez-Trufero and Simon Watts from Avanti Communications (London, United Kingdom), Riccardo De Gaudenzi and Nader Alagha, from the European Space Agency (ESA, Noordwijk, The Netherlands) won one of the two Best Paper Awards from the 7th International Conference on Wireless and Satellite Systems (WiSATS 2015).

The paper, entitled “Implementation of DVB-S2X Super-Frame Format 4 for Wideband Transmission” focuses on a more powerful physical layer frame structure, known as Super-Frame (SF). The research provides insights to capabilities of the SF structure in support of emerging system applications. Analytical results of the SF performance are complemented by the performance results, which have been obtained from an end-to-end testbed implementing SF format 4, optimized for wideband transmission and very low SNR reception conditions.

More specifically, the goal of the researchers is “to study, develop and validate the system and key technologies for the next generation of high-speed IP-based broadcasting and broadband access in future Ka band or Q/V bands satellite systems with wideband transponders”.

The research group explain also what’s next: the extension of the laboratory demonstration to an over-the-air live demonstration: “the main objective is to develop, integrate, verify and optimize further enhanced transmission techniques through testing over real-world wideband satellite transponders”.

That’s not all! The work were carried out in an European Space Agency project, and the planned over-the-air tests are also part of an European Space Agency project.

The research will be published on the EAI Endorsed Transactions on Mobile Communications and Applications.