Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

Making the information infrastructure accessible to all Canadians is a major principle advanced by the government to make Canada the most connected nation in the world. Canada's vast territory, low population density, and harsh northern terrain pose economic and logistical barriers to the expansion of terrestrial broadband networks. The only affordable means of providing universal access to areas un-served or under-served by terrestrial networks is via satellites. This research on the next-generation of advanced multi-band multi-beam high-capacity GEO satellite systems presents many challenges, as it is a huge, multi-dimensional non-linear optimization problem. It is virtually impossible to fully meet all relevant requirements and constraints, for some are clearly in conflict with others. In order to develop a novel, comprehensive methodology of optimally designing advanced satellite systems, an extensive research will be carried out by a PhD student to assess the impact of the following parameters on one another and on overall system: satellite resources and requirements (buses, launchers, power, mass, real estate, orbital slots, payload architectures, beam configurations), frequency bands (30/20 GHz Ka-band, 50/40 GHz V-band, and 80/70 GHz W-band), service considerations (connectivity, capacity, coverage, cost), terminal features (antenna, power amplifier, uplink power control, access, speed, modulation, coding), interference components (inter-modulation, adjacent satellite, adjacent carrier, adjacent channel, cross-polarization, inter-beam, de-polarization), and performance parameters (bit error rate, delay, link availability). Also, in parallel, the following three major research projects, which can have profound impacts on satellite resources and link characteristics and in turn on the optimum design methodology, will be carried out by three MASc students: i) asymmetric apportioning of link availability between uplink and downlink, ii) uneven apportioning of link degradations: thermal noise versus a multitude of interferences, and iii) unequal allotments of spectrum between forward link and return link.