Initial Synchronization Procedure and Doppler Pre-Compensation for LEO-SATCOM Terminals

Wireless low earth orbit (LEO) satellite communication ground terminals need to perform an initial time and frequency synchronization to access to the LEO system. Initial synchronization consists of three steps: detecting the presence of the LEO satellite downlink signal, synchronizing the terminal receiver to the current Doppler frequency shift and performing Doppler pre-compensation before uplink signal transmission, and ensuring low probability of false alarm at low SNR in the LEO uplink receiver. This article explains this three step synchronization procedure in detail. The major advantage is that the synchronization procedure can be carried out even without a priori knowledge of the satellite orbit ephemeris or any sort of GNSS navigation data. Initial synchronization is of particular importance for typical LEO uplink signals which are formed of short radio bursts. The packet detection in burst traffic radio systems is a crucial task to accomplish start of frame detection. It triggers the start of the digital receiver algorithms to demodulate the incoming uplink burst. The packet detection is accomplished by cross-correlation and threshold detection which show significant probability of false alarm in low signal to noise (SNR) regions. Hence, before running a stable uplink connection, the terminal must accomplish the proposed initial synchronization procedure, as outlined in this article.