Türksat Goes Modular with ETL Frequency Converters

Türksat, the primary satellite communications and cable TV operations company in Turkey, is launching two new satellites; 5A and 5B. Türksat 5A is a Ku-Band satellite set to be in orbit in the 31⁰ East longitude slot, while 5B is a Ka-Band HTS satellite with over50 Gbps throughput capacity set to be positioned in the 42⁰ East longitude slot.

Launching in late 2020 and early 2021, the payload of a SpaceX Falcon rocket from Cape Canaveral, Turkey’s only satellite operator had a need to build new ground infrastructure that would match the technological advancements in the sky with future-proofed reliability and cost effectiveness.

The new generation communication satellites will operate in Ku- and Ka- band, and will sit in geostationary orbit, with beams able to cover Turkey, the Middle East, Europe, North Africa and South Africa.

Türksat brought in their trusted partner, PALS Electronics, to help with the project.

With such advanced technology in the sky, PALS and Türksat need high quality frequency converters and matrices in place to deliver a robust Telemetry, Control and Ranging (TCR) system.

These vital links cannot go down, even for a moment, with system-critical data monitoring the health of the satellites with key metrics reported back from the spacecraft’s systems. These links are also key to pinpointing the exact location of the satellites, and when required, taking control to direct their propulsion systems from the ground, to adjust exact location and ensure their continued operability.

With broadcasters relying on 5A to be fully operational at all times and data customers from Turkey to South Africa requiring an always-on high throughput link; the TCR systems are mission critical to meeting service level agreements without compromise, which lie at the heart of the satellite sector’s value proposition.  

"When we include ETL products in our systems, we knew that there will be no problems and there’s no need to price in technical support as their equipment is as reliable as it gets."

Sinan Yildiz, System Integration Engineer at PALS Electronics. 

“As always, gold standard redundancy, reliability and performance are key, but with our new modular designs the team is able to save a lot of rack space and expense while also future-proofing and ensuring against the need for potentially expensive configuration changes in the years to come as the satellite constellation adapts and grows.”

Mohamad Barada, RF Systems Architect & International Sales Manager, ETL Systems.

The four Earth stations, located in Ankara, and the system has been designed to require relatively few antennas. A four-port VSAT antenna with two uplinks and two downlinks is all that’s required, when combined with ETL’s Falcon L-Band to IF Agile Frequency Downconvertermodules andFalcon IF to L-band Agile Frequency Upconverters.

Each of the converter modules has been populated in ETL’s new Genus smart chassis, a major step forward in ground-segment technology, enabling RF equipment, frequency converters, amplifiers, switch matrices and RF over fibre technologies to be hot-swapped in and out of a single chassis in a modular way.

At the end of life, modules can be renewed without the need to replace an entire unit. This is especially important where low cost units such as power supplies and fans can be easily replaced, becoming serviceable parts whilst the RF system modules remain operational and software upgradeable.

The chassis itself is also smarter, forming a habitat that tracks which modules are installed and records the operational history of the unit alongside other factors like heat, humidity and operational cycles, as well as important environmental and functional data.

Most importantly for Türksat and PALS, the Genus chassis has enabled the project team to combine five frequency converters in a single 1U chassis.

Various matrices have also been custom-made in size for the project, including one Enigma distributive matrix, one Victor distributive matrix, and two Victor combining matrices.

Using ETL’s new smart modular Genus chassis, PALS and Türksat have been able to reduce costs without compromising on reliability, performance or redundancy.

Each of the RF system modules can also be hot-swapped, meaning there can be common spares provisioning and significant rack space saving all housed in a robust habitat configured to suit high resilience applications.

In-field upgrades are also much easier and more flexible by adding additional modules to an existing chassis if it’s later required. Up-converters can be combined with down-converters as required and hot-swapped in and out with ease.