Transmit digital television signals over Qatar Oscar 100 satellite

Intro

Following my previous article on the transmission to the Qatar Oscar 100 satellite with SDR technology (LimeSDR, Adalm pluto) which was dedicated to the narrow-band transponder transmission (SSB and modes with spectral width less than 2.7 kHz), here is an article that should this time interest those who are willing to embark on the digital amateur television program, commonly called DATV (Digital Amateur Television).

As you may have read so far, I have a LimeSDR-mini but now also an Adalm Pluto. During one of my conferences (in french – see Amsat Francophone Conference), I had the occasion to compare the two equipments, their advantages and disadvantages. I had the experience to transmit in DATV to QO100 with both the LimeSDR-mini and the Adalm Pluto. Both models work very well, but I will focus in this article on the use of the Adalm Pluto, because finally it is today the solution that is the easiest to implement. Indeed, to transmit with LimeSDR, a Raspberry Pi is necessary. In the case of the Adalm Pluto and especially thanks to the developments of a specific firmware of Evariste F5OEO, we do without this nanocomputer, the Adalm rather embedding the software directly.

In this article, as usual, we will go step by step through all the operations described as precisely as possible.

I use the Windows operating system. I won’t go into the details of the operation of the transmission modes themselves, not being a specialist in the fundamentals. My goal is to bring to your knowledge all the steps that will allow you to build your own transmitting station, and transmit images. It is possible that the software evolving, certain functions, or operations themselves are to be made evolve. Do not hesitate to submit your questions, problems of implementation directly in comment of the article.

Here is the diagram of principle which we will implement, to transmit our DATV videos to the QO-100 satellite.