Link Budget

When designing a satellite link, it is very important that the design of the link meets or exceeds
the minimum required C/N needed for the system to work properly. The process of adjusting the
different parameters of the link such as the size of the transmitting and receiving antennas (which
affects the gain and beamwidth of the antennas), the transmitted power, the noise temperature of
the receiver, the transmission bandwidth and carrier frequency, is called LINK BUDGET.
When computing the link budget for a specific link, the designer usually need to consider the
following points:

Often, a designer would find that the initial values that were selected for the different
parameters result in a C/N ratio for the link that either significantly exceed or do not meet
the minimum C/N ratio needed for proper operation of the link. In this case, the designer
has the task of optimizing the different parameters to meet or slightly exceed the
minimum required C/N ratio.
A designer may intentionally set the link C/N ratio to exceed the minimum required C/N
ratio by few dBs. This difference that is intentionally created is called LINK MARGIN.
This link margin is set to take care of drops in the C/N ratio that may occur due to some
conditions such as but are not limited to:
o Deterioration in link of C/N ratio due to rain. During rain, the C/N ratio may drop
by several dB depending on the severity of rain. In light drizzles, the C/N ratio
may drop by a couple of dBs while in strong rain the C/N ratio may drop by 10
dBs or more. It is clear that it may not make much sense to leave a high link
margin if the satellite covers regions that have little or virtually no rain for the
whole year. On the other, it may not make sense to leave a very small link margin
for satellites that cover regions with high amounts of rain for most of the year.
So, it is always a compromise.
o Drop in link of C/N ratio due to the movement of a GEO satellite in its orbit.
Since a GEO satellite that is supposed to maintain its position in the sky with
respect to Earth always drifts around its place due to non-even gravitational pulls
of Earth, the satellite moves away from its target spot in space causing the
satellite to move away from the boresight direction of the receiving antenna and
hence resulting in reducing the gain of the receiving antenna. This becomes a
very clear problem with satellites that have approached their end of life and are
only stabilized in their position in the East-West direction but not in the NothSouth direction.

Link Budget Computations

In the link budget computations, we compute the C/N ratio of the received signal using the
relationships that we have studied for the computation of the Carrier power (C) and Noise power
(N). The following table shows typical parameters that are required for the computation of the
C/N ratio:
SatelliteOutputPower

15.00

SatelliteOutputBackoff

2.5

dB

AntennaEfficiency

0.85

Diameter

1.20

EdgeofBeamLossforSat.Antenna

dB

SignalBandwidth

22

MHz

11.3

GHz

16

dB

AntennaEfficiency

0.6

Diameter

0.85

SatelliteAntennaGain

CarrierSignalFrequency
MinimumPermittedC/Nratioat
receiver

EarthStationAntennaGain
m

Tin = 25 K
TRF = 35K

GRF=100

TM = 100 K

GM=0.1

TIF = 200 K

GIF=20

ReceiverNoiseSpecifications

MaximumSat.EarthStationDistance

40000

km

ClearAirAtmosphericLoss

dB

RainLoss

dB

OtherLosses

dB

Remember that the link budget computations are done for the worst case scenarios.