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High Rate Satellite Demodulator

ITR has maintained a strength in signal processing developments that has been applied to the area of satellite modems. For over 15 years this work has included the earth resource satellite demodulator (ERSDEM) market, and ITR has teamed with Netherlands based Satellite Services BV (SSBV) to expand their product range to include high-speed earth resource satellite receivers.

By way of background, there are an ever increasing amount of satellites being launched with instrumentation on board that allows detailed information to be received (including optical, infra-red and radar sensors). As the demand for increased information and instrumentation resolution grows, the corresponding burden on communications systems to quickly and accurately transfer the information to the ground increases.

In late 2002, ITR joined with SSBV to develop a fully programmable demodulator capable of multi-satellite missions with data rates to approximately 320 Mbit/s. The result was a significant improvement on ITR’s previous second generation product and was badged ERSDEM-2.5

So successful was this development with SSBV that they sponsored a successful ARC Linkage project to develop a third generation product, ERSDEM-3, capable of simultaneous multi-channel reception and data rates up to 1 Gbit/s. The concepts have been proven, and the product is being finalised ready for sale.

This project is an excellent example of good research and engineering expertise interacting with a company with good technical capability and access to markets.