Satellite Communications Toolbox

Simulate, analyze, and test satellite communications systems and links

Satellite Communications Toolbox provides standards-based tools for designing, simulating, and verifying satellite communications systems and links. The toolbox enables you to model and visualize satellite orbits and perform link analysis and access calculations. You can also design physical layer algorithms together with RF components and ground station receivers, generate test waveforms, and perform golden reference design verification. 

With the toolbox you can configure, simulate, measure, and analyze end-to-end satellite communications links. You can also create and reuse tests to verify that your designs, prototypes, and implementations comply with satellite communications and navigations standards, DVB-S2X, DVB-S2, CCSDS, and GPS. 

What Is Satellite Communications Toolbox?

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Model-Based Design for Space Control Systems

Learn how you can get started and streamline requirements capture, design, implementation, and test.

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Scenario Generation and Visualization

Generate satellite scenarios. Model and visualize satellite orbits. Perform access and link analyses with ground stations.

Orbit Propagation and Visualization

Model satellites with two-body, SGP4, or SDP4 orbit propagators. Visualize 2D and 3D satellite orbits including field of view, ground tracks, and sky plots for navigation. Generate satellite constellations from TLE files or ephemeris data.

Model, Visualize, and Analyze Satellite Scenario

Comparison of Orbit Propagators

Modeling Satellite Constellations Using Ephemeris Data

Satellite Scenario Key Concepts

Introduction to Orbit Propagation and Visualization

Access and Link Analysis

Analyze line-of-sight access. Compute link closures from satellites to ground stations or between satellites. Simulate multihop communications links between ground stations.

Multi-Hop Satellite Communications Link Between Two Ground Stations

Satellite Constellation Access to a Ground Station

Estimate GNSS Receiver Position with Simulated Satellite Constellations

Multi-Hop, Time-Varying Communications Link Analysis

Link Budget Analysis

Configure, analyze, and visualize link budgets for satellite communications. Perform availability and sensitivity analyses.

Link Budget Analyzer App

Analyze, design, and visualize link budgets for satellite communications. Evaluate link budget tradeoffs by customizing parameters including free space path loss, power amplifier gains, and link distances. Customize the analysis with additional user-specified input parameters.

Satellite Link Budget Analyzer

Satellite Link Budget Analysis app showing link budget configurations, free space pathloss, and link margin plots.

Analyzing and visualizing satellite link budgets.

Availability and Sensitivity Analyses

Analyze uplinks, downlinks, and crosslinks. Calculate link margins. Estimate transmission powers needed to achieve a desired availability under various environmental conditions based on ITU-R P.618 propagation loss models.

Get Started with Satellite Link Budget Analyzer App

Screen capture of satellite link availability analysis using a P.618 channel model showing updates to default configurations.

Analyzing link availability using an ITU-R P.618 channel model.

Waveform Generation

Generate standard-based waveforms for satellite communications (DVB-S2, DVB-S2X, and CCSDS) and navigation (GPS). Use your generated waveforms as a golden reference for your design.

Satellite Communications Waveforms

Generate Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems (CCSDS) waveforms including Telecommand (TC) and Telemetry (TM). Generate Digital Video Broadcasting Satellite waveforms including Second Generation (DVB-S2) and Second Generation extended (DVB-S2X) transmissions.

Generate Waveforms

Signal spectrum of a generated DVB-S2 time-domain waveform.

Generating a DVB-S2 time-domain waveform.

Satellite Navigation Waveforms

Generate GPS legacy navigation (LNAV) data, including its frame structure, using ephemeris and almanac data.

GPS Waveform Generation

GPS orbit depiction showing the Earth-centered Earth-fixed (ECEF) coordinate system.

Generating GPS waveforms.

Link-Level Simulation

Simulate satellite communications links using DVB-S2, DVB-S2X, and CCSDS transmissions. Model propagation channel, transmitter, and receiver operations. Analyze link performance by computing bit error rate (BER) and packet error rate (PER) metrics.

Channel Modeling

Use ITU-R P.618 propagation loss models to design Earth-space links for satellite communications systems. Use ETSI-specified Rician and land mobile satellite (LMS) channels for link-level simulation of geostationary (GEO) satellites.

Earth-Space Propagation Losses

Simulation and Visualization of a Land Mobile-Satellite Channel

Instantaneous power a Land Mobile-Satellite channel showing the power of the channel envelope varying with time.

Instantaneous power of a Land Mobile-Satellite channel.

Receiver Design

Demodulate and decode DVB-S2, DVB-S2X, and CCSDS received waveforms. Include effects of RF front-end impairments and corrections. Measure bit error rate (BER) and packet error rate (PER) to characterize performance.

End-to-End CCSDS Telecommand Simulation with RF Impairments and Corrections

End-to-End CCSDS Telemetry Synchronization and Channel Coding Simulation with RF Impairments and Corrections

End-to-End DVB-S2 Simulation with RF Impairments and Corrections

End-to-End DVB-S2X Simulation with RF Impairments and Corrections for Regular Frames

The Constellation Diagram window showing a constellation diagram of a received DVB-S2X signal.

Synchronized and equalized DVB-S2X received signal.

Golden Reference Design Verification

Use customizable and editable algorithms as golden references for design verification. Generate C code from open MATLAB algorithms using MATLAB Coder.

Reference Design MATLAB Code

Explore and use transmitter, channel model, and receiver link-level operations that are expressed as open and customizable MATLAB^® code. Customize the algorithms used in calculations of link budget, link availability, and link sensitivity analyses.

Open and customizable MATLAB code for DVB-S2X waveform generation.

C or C++ Code Generation

Generate portable C or C++ source code, or standalone applications from your MATLAB applications that use Satellite Communications Toolbox. Use the generated C or C++ source code or executable to verify your designs outside the MATLAB environment.