Beacon receivers and digital detectors solutions for Earth-Satellite propagation campaigns

Modeling Earth-Satellite propagation channel requires extensive experimental data. One aspect of the utmost importance is the spatial diversity of the channel over wide areas and is a target for the Alphasat campaign that is being prepared within the COST IC0802 activities. The development of cheap beacon receivers is an important contribution to deploy as many terminals as possible. We describe first the opportunities offered with these campaigns and the efforts that are being done by the community to participate. After introducing the beacon receiver requirements and major design issues, some guidelines concerning the development from analogue hardware to digital parts mainly concerning the detector are discussed. Digital detectors hardware and trials from user developed cards and commercial cards are presented and described as well as full beacon receiver solutions.