A reliable and cost-effective model to enhance the robustness of a geostationary satellite control earth station system

Abstract

A ground network of communications satellite system is typically made up of Earth Station(s), Mission Operations Center (MOC), Science Operations Center (SOC), and the supporting infrastructure that connects them all. A ground network grows as more Earth Stations are added, which requires additional considerations to ensure that the MOC can communicate with all the Earth Stations in the network. It also requires continuous upgrade to provide a better reliability for a better performance. The improvements of the reliability of a Geostationary satellite control Earth Station system can be accomplished via redundancies of the subsystems, multiple testing in the planning stage and selection of only the best components for its subsystems. Suitable maintenance activities from time to time also play an important role to prevent the cost blow out and any unwanted failures. Hence, the development of a new reliability model based on identified factors that caused calamity to the system was the main objective of this research. In addition, this research also aims to develop an operational cost model along with the suitable maintenance activities to enhance the robustness of the geostationary satellite control Earth Station system. The models were designed by applying Monte Carlo from MATLAB software. The reliability and cost data that were used for simulations was obtained from MEASAT. Based on the previous studies, configurations with more redundancies in the subsystem can affect the reliability performance, which can decrease the failure rate. At the end of this research, a new reliability model of an Earth Station system which was compared against 2-parallel, 3-parallel, and 4-parallel configurations within the range of affordability (operational cost model) along with the suitable maintenance activities were proposed to enhance the robustness of the geostationary satellite control Earth Station system. The three elements consisting of the reliability model, suitable maintenance activities as well as the operational cost model were integrated together creating a sustainable framework. The obtained results showed that an Earth Station that was configured with the 2-parallel configuration provided the cheapest and optimum reliability system performance even though the 3-parallel and the 4-parallel configurations provided higher reliability. Consequently, the sustainable framework encompassing reliability and cost elements were modelled based on the 2-parallel configuration together with the proposed maintenance activities. Furthermore, root mean square (RMS) values were also calculated for both the reliability and the operational cost models. The results demonstrated that the calculated RMS values for both new reliability and new operational cost models produced the smallest values of 20.84% and 22.82% respectively. Therefore, the calculated RMS values for both reliability and operational cost models showed that the 2-parallel configuration fit to be applied in the Earth Station system design which contributes to the system design with acceptable reliability and most affordable cost.