Satellite payloads are becoming much more complex with the evolution towards multimedia applications. Moreover satellite lifetime increases while standard and services evolve faster, necessitating a hardware platform that can evolves for not developing new systems on each change. The same problem occurs in terrestrial systems like mobile networks and a foreseen solution is the software defined radio technology. In this paper we describe a way of introducing this concept at satellite level to offer to operators the required flexibility in the system. The digital functions enabling this technology, the hardware components implementing the functions and the reconfiguration processes are detailed. We show that elements of the software radio for satellites exist and that this concept is feasible.

Subband decomposition has already been shown to increase the performances of spectral estimation but induced frequency overlapping may be troublesome, bringing edge effects, when spectral estimation is applied after subband decomposition and decimation. This paper proposes a new spectral estimation procedure based on subband decomposition and frequency warping which reduces the overlapping frequency problem. Simulation results confirm the interest of this new algorithm.

This paper addresses the problem of frequency overlapping which occurs when spectral estimation is applied after subband decomposition. Subband decomposition has already been shown to increase the performances of spectral estimation but induced frequency overlapping may be troublesome. This paper proposes a new spectral estimation procedure based on sub band decomposition and frequency warping which reduces the overlapping frequency problem. Simulations confirm the interest of this new algorithm.

This paper presents new concepts to address the air traffic complexity modeling problem. Two new geometrical metrics have been introduced and have been found very useful to capture typical features of traffic complexity. The covariance metric is very adapted to identify disorder in a set of speed vectors and can be applied for en route airspace (en route airspace is the airspace between airports). Similarly, the Koenig metric identifies easily the curl movement organizations and can be applied to areas around airports where air traffic control procedures impose turns on aircraft trajectories.