Improving the Estimation of Attenuation in Q/V Band Systems with a Kalman-Based Scintillation Filter

TL;DR

This paper introduces SciFi, a Kalman filter-based algorithm for real-time estimation and removal of tropospheric scintillation effects in Q/V band attenuation data, improving fade mitigation.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel Kalman-based scintillation filter that estimates attenuation, its slope, and confidence intervals, enabling real-time operation and enhanced fade mitigation.

Findings

Effective removal of scintillation effects demonstrated on Alphasat data

Real-time operation capability confirmed

Improved attenuation estimation accuracy

Abstract

This paper presents the design and implementation of the Scintillation Filter by Kalman-colored algorithm (SciFi), which is used to remove tropospheric scintillation from Q/V bands total attenuation data series. In contrast to the classical methods using low-pass filters, the SciFi algorithm allows to estimate both the attenuation, its slope and a confidence interval. Moreover, the linear observer structure of the Kalman filter allows it to operate in real time. Therefore, the states and uncertainties estimated by SciFi can be used as input for Fade Mitigation Techniques (FMT) such as Adaptive Coding and Modulation (ACM) or Site Diversity (SD). In this article, we propose a method to tune the noise level based on recommendations approved by the ITU-R. Finally, some results of filtering on Alphasat experimental data are discussed.