Reconfigurability for Satellite Terminals: Feasibility and Convenience

The reasons for the growing interest in reconfigurability is motivated and supported by a technology evolution of signal processing components, such as analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog converters, signal processors and FPGAs, available in the market with ever increasing performances and lower power consumptions. Reconfigurability however is expensive, in terms of development costs, power consumption, computational efficiency of devices, so not all radio systems may benefit from this innovative design. The selection of convenience areas is a tough task. Each communication context, satellites being one, has to be properly analyzed before making the decisions. We try in this paper to analyze the potentials of Software Radio for space applications, where large investments but also large risks are present.