Investigating the possibilities and performance of satellite jamming using distributed beamforming.

Sammanfattning

The NewSpace movement has created an unprecedented upswing in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites that offer global connectivity and Earth observation. The Swedish Defence Research Agency (FOI) has identified this as an increased risk of espionage from space and requires away to shield certain areas from unwanted eyes. The following thesis investigates if it is possible and practical to jam LEO satellites by the use of Software-Defined Radios (SDRs) in Distributed Beamforming (DBF) networks. The scenario is simulated using MATLAB where a satellite is traversing overhead of an antenna cluster that will listen in to the satellite transmission and attempt to beamform a jamming signal towards the satellite to disrupt further communications. To determine the functionality of the beamforming network, the beamforming gain will be analysed and the resulting signal will be compared against a reference signal using the parameters of a Starlink user terminal. This work focuses on synchronization in time, frequency and phase of the beamforming signals when operating in the Ku frequency band (14.25 GHz). The results show that as long as the beamforming signals has a Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) higher than 0 dB, the DBF network can achieve a beamforming gain close to the theoretical maximum and by increasing the amount of beamforming nodes, the gain will increase proportionally, even at negative SNRs.