The STM Group, Inc. is now shipping its SatLink family of VSATs and hubs with support for the new DVB-RCS2 standard, just a few months after approval by the DVB organisation.
DVB-RCS2 provides for higher order modulation and coding along with many other elements contributing to much higher throughput, better bandwidth efficiency, and improved link availability relative to legacy VSAT systems.
Modulation and coding from QPSK 1/3 up to 16QAM 5/6 is provided for TDMA burst mode carriers with Adaptive Coding and Modulation (ACM) controlled per burst for each VSAT. The other elements include a 16-state Turbo Code FEC and highly efficient Return Link Encapsulation (RLE) for IP packets imposing about 2% overhead.
In the SatLink implementation, TDMA carriers can be operated in large, dynamically shared pools at various symbol rates up to 8 Msps with carrier spacing of only 12%. VSATs use very fast frequency hopping, under 5 microseconds, across carriers, providing a huge dynamic range for handling diverse conditions and/or VSAT sizes within a single beam. Return Link carriers with over 22 Mbps of IP throughput are possible in TDMA mode using short bursts of 540 symbols, providing maximum burst filling efficiency.
Operators of both large and small networks can reportedly realise benefits with SatLink’s DVB-RCS implementation. In small networks with few VSATs and one or two TDMA carriers, the “ACM per burst” feature makes it so operators do not have to choose the “best” modulation and coding to use; it is determined automatically per VSAT with each burst. Large networks benefit in this same way, plus they get additional multiplexing efficiency gains by using larger pools of TDMA bandwidth, dynamically sharing up to 50 Mbps across many 1000s of VSATs, if desired. Total efficiency gains with RCS2 can be as large as 300% on TDMA carriers compared to legacy VSAT networks.
RCS2 is available on the current generation of SatLink VSAT IDU and Hub products, including the SatLink 2000 IDU, SatLink 2900 IDU, SatLink 2900 Mobile/Maritime IDU and the SatLink 8560 FLS and RLS products. STM also continues to support and enhance features of its proven DVB-RCS implementation on these and earlier generation SatLink platforms.
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