SATSENT-SATellite SEnsor NeTworks for Spectrum Monitoring

Principal investigators: Dr. Symeon Chatzinotas/ Prof. Björn Ottersten
Vice principal investigators: Dr. Sina Maleki
Partner: SES TechCom
Funding: FNR-CORE Junior Track
Researcher: Ashkan Kalantari, Christos Politis

About the Project

Satellite sensor networks (SSNs) are defined as a constellation of sensors which observe a specific phenomenon such as temperature, humidity, and employ satellite terminals to transfer the measured data to one or more data centres. Data centres are the final processor of the received data and can use the data for a range of application purposes such as environmental monitoring, emergency networks, monitoring and surveillance of remote areas, supervisory and data acquisitions systems (SCADA), and critical infrastructure. Sensors in SSN can be deployed on the ground, in space, or a combination of both. The deployment locations of the sensors depend on the type of the application. For example, for fire detection applications, the sensors are located on the ground, but for earth observation, the sensors are located on-board satellites in space. In this project, we deal with a combination of terrestrial SSNs which employ a satellite uplink, and on-board satellite sensors. Terrestrial SSNs refer to those SSNs where the sensors are deployed on the ground, and are particularly useful for applications where either the terrestrial network access is not easy to achieve, e.g. deserts, forests, or some rural areas, or the observation has to cover a vast geographical area. On-board sensors can be used for applications where ground based sensors either cannot observe a phenomenon or their observation is not sufficiently reliable. Furthermore, on-board sensing allows for quicker deployment since no terrestrial sensing and relaying infrastructure is required.

In the project SATSENT “SATellite SEnsor NeTworks for spectrum monitoring”, we are interested in employing SSN for spectrum monitoring which can be categorized under SCADA. The goal is to employ a combined ground and in-orbit SSN in order to produce a spectrum cartography map over a vast geographical area as shown in Figure 1. This dynamic spectrum map depicts which wireless service is active, and with how much power it transmits data, at a specific location, time and frequency band. The reason we follow a combined approach is because terrestrial spectrum sensors can achieve better resolution of horizontal transmissions, whereas satellite spectrum monitoring can achieve better resolution of transmissions with high elevation angles. The spectrum monitoring information can be utilized in a plethora of applications. Here we are interested in using this information for network management services in order to gain spectrum access under secondary access priority within a cognitive radio paradigm, and further monitor the activity of the spectrum for quality of service (QoS) measurements as well as interference/jammer detection and localisation.

 

Figure 1: Schematic Plan of the Satellite Sensor Network for Spectrum Monitoring

Project Partners

• SIGCOM, SnT, University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg
• SES TechCom, Betzdorf, Luxembourg

Funding Details

• Funding Source: National Research Fund, Luxembourg 
• Project start date: April 2015
• Expected End date: April 2018

Management Team

• PI: Dr. Symeon Chatzinotas (SnT)
• Vice PI: Dr. Sina Maleki (SnT) 

Advisory Team

• Scientific Advisor: Prof. Björn Ottersten (SnT)
• Scientific Mentor: Prof. Geert Leus (TU Delft) (http://cas.et.tudelft.nl/~leus/)

Research Team

• Dr. Symeon Chatzinotas (SnT)
• Dr. Sina Maleki (SnT)
• Ashkan Kalantari (SnT)
• Christos Politis (SnT)

Industrial Collaborators

• Dr. Konstantinos Liolis (SES TechCom)
• Frank Zimmer (SES TechCom)

Structure and Work Packages

• WP1: State-of-the-Art and Satellite Sensor Network Architectures
• WP2: Spectrum Cartography using Ground based Sensors
• WP3: On-Board Spectrum Monitoring
• WP4: Data Fusion, Performance Evaluation and Comparison
• WP5: Project Management, Dissemination and Commercial Exploitation

Relevant Links

• CO2SAT
• EU FP7 CoRaSat
• SeMIGod

Contact: Dr. Symeon Chatzinotas - Research Scientist