Demodulation on-board a satellite is a key issue for future multimedia communication systems as multi-point to multi-point transmissions are concerned due to its mandatory role before a packet switching process. At Ka-band the carrier frequency on the up-link is 30 Ghz approximately, thus phase noise equipment’s induced by up-conversions can become critical for the coherent digital demodulator. For short burst transmissions feedforward functions have to be used instead of feedback structures. In this paper, the impact of phase noise on carrier phase estimators is characterized for different algorithms and several phase modulations in terms of standard deviation and resulting degradation in Eb/No.