Digital Audio Radio Broadcast Satellite Earth Station for Fraunhofer Institute, Innovationszentrum, IZT, Erlangen, Germany (Project Completed – April 1999)

System integration, installation & commissioning of ‘X' Band Satellite Earth Station for digital audio radio broadcast service (DARS) using Afristar satellite.

Project included 4.5 meter C band Cassagrain Andrew antenna with modified X band transmit / L band receive feed from Seavey, Inc. and step track tracking system from SPL, UK, Globecomm Systems supplied RF system, 50 watt Solid State Power amplifiers & Up Converter, LNA, associated RF equipment and Monitor & Control Systems.
Baseband equipment is supplied by Fraunhofer Institute, IZT, Erlangen, Germany.
The Fraunhofer Baseband system is one of the key components in the DARS broadcast station. It performs all of the necessary processing of service components generated by a broadcaster for uplink transmission in the digital network.
These services can be analog or digital audio as well as data services. The baseband system processes the service component according to the digital format : MPEG 2.5 layer-3 audio encoding, broadcast channel multiplexing, demultiplexing and modulation onto the carriers which are then transmitted to the satellite.