Abstract
La Salle and the Observatori de l’Ebre (OE) have been involved in a remote sensing project in Antarctica for the last 11 years. The OE has been monitoring the geomagnetic activity for more than twenty years and also the ionospheric activity of the last ten years in the Spanish Antarctic Station Juan Carlos I (ASJI) (62.7 ° S, 299.6 ° E). La Salle is finishing the design and testing of a low-power communication system between the ASJI and Cambrils (41.0 ° N, 1.0 ° E) with a double goal: (i) the transmission of data from the sensors located at the ASJI and (ii) the performance of an oblique ionospheric sounding of a 12,760 km HF link. Previously, La Salle has already performed sounding and modulation tests to describe the channel performance in terms of availability, Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR), Doppler spread and delay spread. This paper closes the design of the physical layer, by means of the channel error study and the synchronization performance, and concludes with a new physical layer proposal for the Oblique Ionosphere Sounder. Narrowband and wideband frames have been defined to be used when the oblique sounder performs as an ionospheric sensor. Finally, two transmission modes have been defined for the modem performance: the High Robustness Mode (HRM) for low SNR hours and the High Throughput Mode (HTM) for the high SNR hours.
Highlights
Antarctica is a remote and isolated continent of great interest for the scientific community.Many remote sensors are scattered across the continent to conduct experiments related to different disciplines such as biology, geology and physics, performing experiments that cannot be reproduced anywhere else on Earth
We present the study of the synchronization sequences, we analyze the channel error burst rate and we choose the best modulations and their configuration to define a physical layer proposal
When comparing the bandwidths, the best situation is presented by the wider one, as it performs better against channel selective fading. Another conclusion extracted from the table is that the results show no evidence of significant differences between CAZAC and m-sequences, because high noise and lossy environment dissipates the difference in terms of auto-correlation between both types of sequence
Summary
Antarctica is a remote and isolated continent of great interest for the scientific community. Many remote sensors are scattered across the continent to conduct experiments related to different disciplines such as biology, geology and physics, performing experiments that cannot be reproduced anywhere else on Earth These sensors usually store the data during the winter until they can be downloaded the following summer or send the data periodically via a satellite link. We present the study of the synchronization sequences, we analyze the channel error burst rate and we choose the best modulations and their configuration to define a physical layer proposal. In order to define a physical layer, we have identified and evaluated four different transmission situations: (i) narrowband sounding; (ii) wideband sounding;.
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