Satcom loading analysis with heterogeneous gain states

As the development of new military and commercial satcom systems continues, new features and capabilities are being added to traditional approaches. One of these features is the ability to accomplish flexible band-switching in the satellite. This capability will allow signals from different up-link antennas to be combined into a single transponder. A by-product of this enhancement is the ability to select different gain states for each of many sub-channels in the transponder. Heterogeneous gain states can be especially useful for balancing the needs of dissimilar links in the same transponder, since large terminals generally, work better with smaller gains, bill small terminals require large gains. To date, analysis tools have not generally, been available for assessing the performance of transponding satellites with heterogeneous gain states. This paper provides a method for analyzing such satellite loading scenarios. The approach presented builds directly on previous work that determines whether a given set of this is supportable, while optimizing the transponder operating point. An example is provided.