We are planning to use the LimeSDR in a satellite ground station to receive and send signals from and to the spacecraft. The RX and TX antennas are placed near to each other.
How can we protect the SDR against strong neighbouring signals , ESD, lightning , etc … ?
Can the strong TX signal we will send to the satellite damage the RX of the SDR ?
Put it in a metal enclosure and follow ESD design principles.
Use a surge arrester on the feeder. This will help with nearby strikes, but obviously not a direct hit!
It depends on many things and it’s near impossible to say without knowing a lot more about the setup. But if the system is half-duplex you can switch T/R and terminate the RX input during transmit. If it’s full duplex you can split Tx/Rx frequencies and use various types of filters to sufficiently attenuate unwanted signals.
Others may have other suggestions, but the requirement is a little vague! If you don’t have someone with RF experience on-hand to consult with, perhaps if you provide some more details here it will be easier to advise.
Yes , I would not exceed 8dbm. Max I have used is up to 10dbm and that’s risking it.
We are intending to use a Power Amplifier on the TX (signals from Ground Station → Satellite) path and an LNA on the RX path (Signals from Satellite → Ground Station).
The RX will be in the UHF band while the TX will be in the UHF or VHF bands (And in case of using UHF we intend to use a different frequency than the ).
The Power of the TX signal sent to the satellite will be between 10 and 50 W (Our Link budget is not fixed yet).
The two antennas will be mounted near each other so we can use the same rotator.
We are intending to use a Power Amplifier on the TX (signals from Ground Station → Satellite) path and an LNA on the RX path (Signals from Satellite → Ground Station).
The RX will be in the UHF band while the TX will be in the UHF or VHF bands (And in case of using UHF we intend to use a different frequency than the ).
The Power of the TX signal sent to the satellite will be between 10 and 50 W (Our Link budget is not fixed yet).
The two antennas will be mounted near each other so we can use the same rotator.
VHF and UHF should be easier to filter. Assuming that you used UHF this should be workable provided the Tx/Rx frequency shift/split is large enough and you use an appropriate duplexer. Amateur radio repeaters on VHF and UHF bands tend to use a common antenna with a duplexer. It’s just that when using a smaller Tx/Rx shift, such as 1.6MHz on the 432MHz band, the filters/duplexers tend to get physically larger and more costly.