Quantification of Physical Blockage Based on Digital Surface Model (DSM) Dataset

Abstract

In this paper, we introduced a new approach for quantifying the amount of physical blockage surrounding a certain ground station. This type of blockage is important to be analyzed since it could reduce the duration of communication between ground stations and satellites. The amount of physical blockage has been calculated by employing a Digital Surface Model (DSM) dataset. The DSM enables the calculation of elevation offset between a ground station to its surrounding natural and man-made objects. Based on the simulation, the accuracy of the proposed approach is capable of resulting in 93.1% of accuracy. Apart from quantifying the amount of physical blockage for a certain point, the proposed approach has also been applied to map the distribution of physical blockage on the entire study area, Biak Island, Indonesia. It is found that the generated map can be used for determining a suitable location for building a ground station site.