Radio Technology Metropolia/A.

Koivumäki

Link budget problems and exercises

(See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link_budget.)

Excel file linkbudget.calculator.xls is used for calculations.

1. Solve the problems in section 12 (e) of the "Antenna fundamentals" text.

2. a) The radio path (f = 900 MHz) between a mobile phone and the base station has a loss of 30 dB in
addition to the free space loss. The base station measures the level of the signal transmitted by the phone,
and it sends the phone a command to set the transmit power to a level, which gives a received power level
of -90 dBm. The antenna gain of the phone is 2 dB and the receive gain of the base station antenna is 7
dB. The distance between the phone and the base station is 500 m. What will be the transmit power level
of the phone?
b) Same problem with f = 1800 MHz. All other values remain the same. (In real life the 30 dB attenuation
value may rise by a few dB.)
c) Make conclusions from the two answers bearing in mind that the frequencies used in mobile phone
networks will get higher in the future.

3. TV-satellite transmitter has a transmit power of 20 W and transmit antenna diameter of 90 cm. The
aperture efficiency of the antenna is 0.6. Transmit frequency is 12.0 GHz. Noise figure of the receiver is
0.7 dB and noise temperature of the external noise received by the antenna is 60 K. The TV picture
quality is satisfactory if the signal-to-noise ratio of reception is better than 12 dB. Bandwidth of a TV
channel is 27 MHz.
a) What should be the diameter of the receive antenna, if we assume an aperture efficiency of 0.7?
b) The satellite is upgraded for digital TV transmission (transmit power and antenna size remain the
same, but the bandwidth of TV channels is 36 MHz). In digital reception, a received S/N of 6 dB is
sufficient. What is the antenna diameter required in digital TV reception?

4. Aliens living 26 light years away from the Earth want to watch the TV programs of the Finnish
Broadcasting Company (YLE). So, at the moment they are watching programs of the year 1990.
Assumptions: The EIRP (Effective Isotropic Radiated Power = transmitter power multiplied by antenna
gain) of the YLE analogue transmitter at that time was 1 MW. Frequency was 600 MHz, bandwidth of the
TV channel was 7 MHz. In addition to the TV signal, the receive antenna of the aliens also receives noise
from the Universe, especially from the center of the Galaxy. Let's assume that the noise power at the input
of the receiver is −120 dBm for one 7 MHz channel. To be able to enjoy the high quality programming of
YLE, the aliens must have a signal-to-noise ratio (S/N, or, to be precise, carrier-to-noise ratio, C/N) of the
reception more than 40 dB (only analogue TV is available, digital TV transmissions will reach them in
the year 2027). What must be the gain of the receive antenna? If the antenna is a reflector antenna, what is
the diameter of the reflector? (Let's assume that the aliens can reach an aperture efficiency of 99 %.).
From which movie did I get the idea for this problem? (In the movie the aliens did not watch YLE, they
watched a transmission from Berlin Olympic Games in 1936.)

5. The Moon is 400 000 km from the Earth. The dust-eating little blue creatures living under the surface
of the Moon are bored and they want to watch our TV programs. How many dB is the receive antenna
gain they need? Some values: The transmit power of the TV transmitter = 100 W. Transmit antenna gain
= 25 dB. Frequency = 700 MHz. Noise power at the output of the receive antenna = −105 dBm for one 8
MHz channel. Signal-to-noise ratio required = 18 dB (digital TV manages with smaller C/N than
analogue TV). The antenna gain needed is so big that reflector antenna is the only possible antenna type.
How large a reflector do the Moon creatures need?