Open Research Institute / DVB-S2/X Multimedia Beacon

Good news - a proof of concept for the DVB-S2 encoder is working. A major component of the FPGA design for the downlink has been validated.

Format is:
1) What did you do this week?
2) What are you going to do next week?
3) Roadblocks?
4) Need any resources?

Presentation about ORI with a Multimedia DVB-S2 Beacon Demo.

Noodling around in Zoom. Looks like it might work.

Here's a progress update on our multimedia beacon project, going on the air at 10 GHz and providing advanced digital broadband microwave opportunities for people interested in learning more about DVB-S2/X transmit and receive.

Codenamed BeacRon, in honor of Ron Economos, who advises the work, the project transmits a signal that bridges the gap between "nothing" and the satellite downlink that we've been hard at work to deliver.

This beacon relies upon GNU Radio, a relatively inexpensive computer, a relatively inexpensive SDR, and some relatively expensive RF hardware from DB6NT.

This update is mainly about the transport stream, which has a lot to do with the formatting of how the data is delivered over the air.

The traditional DATV approach is to use MPEG as the transport stream. This is the traditional video stream, like in broadcast television. We specify GSE, or Generic Stream Encapsulation. This allows any packetized data. It reduces the overhead and allows for a lot more freedom. There are so many really fun things that we can do as hams here.

But we have to get from zero, to fun and accessible digital downlinks somehow. This beacon project is one of those steps along the way.

We start out with MPEG as the transport stream and show the transition from constant coding and modulation flowgraph to attempting a variable coding and modulation flowgraph.

Pre-computing the samples helps make things work on a Raspberry Pi 4.

Here is a brief report about the Open Research Institute DVB-S2 beacon project. This is on 10 GHz and will allow people to experiment with both MPEG and GSE transport stream transmissions.