SATELLITE

COMMUNICATION
WHAT IS A SATELLITE?
A satellite is any object that orbits another object. All masses
that are part of the solar system, including the Earth, are satellites either of
the Sun, or satellites of those objects, such as the Moon

WHAT IS TELECOMMUNICATION?
Telecommunication is the transmission of messages, over
significant distances, for the purpose of communication.

WHAT IS A COMMUNICATION SATELLITE?

A communications satellite (COMSAT) is an
artificial satellite stationed in space for the purpose of telecommunications.
Modern communications satellites use a variety of orbits
including geostationary orbits, Molniya orbits, other elliptical orbits and low
(polar and non-polar) Earth orbits.

SATELLITE COMMUNICATION
It is simply the communication of the satellite in space with
large number of earth stations on the ground
For fixed (point-to-point) services, communications satellites
provide a microwave radio relaytechnology complementary to that
of submarine communication cables..
 WHY SATELLITES FOR COMMUNICATION

We had, of course, been able to do transatlantic telephone calls and

telegraph via underwater cables for almost 50 years. At exactly this time,
however, a new phenomenon was born. The first television programs were
being broadcast, but the greater amount of information required transmitting
television pictures required that they operate at much higher frequencies
than radio stations.A typical television station would operate at a frequency
of 175 MHz. As a result, television signals would not propagate the way
radio signals did.
Both radio and television frequency signals can
propagate directly from transmitter to receiver. This is a very dependable
signal, but it is more or less limited to line of sight communication. The
mode of propagation employed for long distance radio communication was a
signal, which traveled by bouncing off the charged layers of the atmosphere
(ionosphere) and returning to earth. The higher frequency television signals
did not bounce off the ionosphere and as a result disappeared into space in a
relatively short distance. This is shown in the diagram below
 Radio Signals Reflect Off the Ionosphere; TV Signals Do Not

HISTORY OF COMMUNICATION SATELLITES

The first satellite that was used for communication purpose in INDIA was
ARYABHATTA and it was launched in 19th April.1975. It was made and
assembled by an organization called Indian Space Research Organization
(ISRO). In the year 1981, a satellite named APPLE was launched in space
which was the first Indian Experimental communication satellite. The
unique feature of it was that it was a three axis stabilization geosynchronous
satellite and weighed around 645 kg. The term APPLE is an abbreviation for
Ariane Passenger Payload Experiment. It consisted of a (6/4 Ghz) processing
equipment called Transponder. Various experiments were carried out with
APPLE, [SITE, STEP (Other satellite telecommunication experiment
projects)] and the results obtained from these experiments provided an
impetus for Govt. of India to have its own multipurpose Geosynchronous
Earth Orbit satellite under INSAT (Indian National Satellite) program. The
first satellite INSAT-1A was launched in the year 1982 which was under this
INSAT program, but this effort went in vain as the power house of this
satellite consisting of solar cells did not operate properly( failed to open) and
this satellite was unused latter on. The average electrical power required by
INSAT-1 was approximately 1000W and was provided by the power house
subsystem of the satellite. The payload was one C-band transponder and two
S-band transponders. Later succession of INSAT-1 series was launched like
INSAT-1B, INSAT-C and INSAT-D. After this due to the success of the
first generation satellites, INSAT-2 series was launched viz. INSAT-2A,
INSAT-2B, INSAT-2C, INSAT-3D and INSAT-2E which provided variety
of services

TYPES OF COMMUNICATION SATELLITES

LOW EARTH ORBITTING SATELLITES:

In 1960, the simplest communications satellite ever conceived
was launched. It was called Echo, because it consisted only of a large (100
feet in diameter) aluminized plastic balloon. Radio and TV signals
transmitted to the satellite would be reflected back to earth and could be
received by any station within view of the satellite.

Echo Satellite
 Unfortunately, in its low earth orbit, the Echo
satellite circled the earth every ninety minutes. This meant that although
virtually everybody on earth would eventually see it, no one person, ever
saw it for more than 10 minutes or so out of every 90 minute orbit. In 1958,
the Score satellite had been put into orbit. It carried a tape recorder, which
would record messages as it passed over an originating station and then
rebroadcast them as it passed over the destination. Once more, however, it
appeared only briefly every 90 minutes - a serious impediment to real
communications. In 1962, NASA launched the Telstar satellite for AT&T.

Telstar Communications Satellite

Telstar's orbit was such that it could "see" Europe"

and the US simultaneously during one part of its orbit. During another part
of its orbit it could see both Japan and the U.S. As a result, it provided real-
time communications between the United States and those two areas - for a
few minutes out of every hour.
GEO- SYNCHRONOUS SATELLITES:

The solution to the problem of availability, of course,

lay in the use of the geo-synchronous orbit. In 1963, the necessary rocket
booster power was available for the first time and NASA launched the geo-
synchronous satellite, Syncom 2. For those who could "see" it, the satellite
was available 100% of the time, 24 hours a day. The satellite could view
approximately 42% of the earth. For those outside of that viewing area, of
course, the satellite was NEVER available.

Syncom II Communications Satellite

Today, there are approximately 150 communications satellites in orbit, with

over 100 in geo-synchronous orbit. it possible to transmit 1000s of phone
calls between almost any two points on the earth. It was also possible for the
first time, due to the large capacity of the satellites, to transmit live
television pictures between virtually any two points on earth.
 BASIC COMPONENTS OF COMSAT
Every communications satellite in its simplest form involves the
transmission of information from an originating ground station to the
satellite (the uplink), followed by a retransmission of the information from
the satellite back to the ground (the downlink). The downlink may either be
to a select number of ground stations or it may be broadcast to everyone in a
large area. Hence the satellite must have a receiver and a receive antenna, a
transmitter and a transmit antenna, some method for connecting the uplink to
the downlink for retransmission, and prime electrical power to run all of the
electronics. The exact nature of these components will differ, depending on
the orbit and the system architecture, but every communications satellite
must have these basic components. This is illustrated in the drawing below:
EARTH STATION
Earth station is the common name for every installation located on the
Earth's surface and intended for communication (transmission and/or
reception) with one or more satellites
Earth stations include all devices and installations for satellite
communications: handheld devices for mobile satellite telephony,
briefcase satellite phones, satellite TV reception, as well as installations
that are less familiar, eg VSAT stations and satellite broadcast TV
stations
The term Earth station refers to the collection of equipment that is needed
to perform communications via satellite: the antenna (often a dish) and
the associated equipment (receiver/decoder, transmitter).
PAYLOAD
The payload represents all equipment a satellite needs to do its job. This
can include antennas, cameras, radar and electronics.
The payload is different for every satellite. For example, the payload for
a weather satellite includes cameras to take pictures of cloud formations,
while the payload for a communications satellite includes large antennas
to transmit TV or telephone signals to Earth.
TRANSPONDER
The transponder is the key component for satellite communications: it is
the part of the payload that takes the signals received from the
transmitting Earth station, filters and translates these signals and then
redirects them to the transmitting antenna on board. Communications
satellites carry a large number of transponders on board (normally from
 six to more than 24), enabling them to deliver multiple channels of
communication at the same time. These channels are called carriers.
ANTENNAS
Antennas that receive the original signal from the transmitting Earth
station and re-transmit this signal to the receive stations on Earth.
The antennas that were used in the past to do this were omni-directional
(transmitting signals in every direction) and not very effective. They
were replaced by more efficient high-gain antennas (most often dish
shaped) pointing quite precisely towards the areas they were servicing
BUS
The bus is the part of the satellite that carries the payload and all its
equipment into space. It is the physical platform that holds all the
satellite's parts together and that provides electrical power, navigation,
control and propulsion to the spacecraft. The bus also contains equipment
that allows the satellite to communicate with Earth, a kind of 'remote
control'.

POWER GENERATION
You might wonder why we don't actually use
transmitters with thousands of watts of power. There simply isn't that much
power available on the spacecraft. There is no line from the power company
to the satellite. The satellite must generate all of its own power. For a
communications satellite, that power usually is generated by large solar
panels covered with solars cells - just like the ones in your solar-powered
calculator. These convert sunlight into electricity. Since there is a practical
limit to the how big a solar panel can be, there is also a practical limit to the
amount of power which can generated. In addition, unfortunately,
transmitters are not very good at converting input power to radiated power
so that 1000 watts of power into the transmitter will probably result in only
100 or 150 watts of power being radiated. We say that transmitters are only
10 or 15% efficient. In practice the solar cells on the most "powerful"
satellites generate only a few thousand watts of electrical power

WORKING OF A SATELLITE
It is simply the communication of the satellite in
space with large number of earth stations on the ground. Users are the ones
who generate baseband signals, which is processed at the earth station and
then transmitted to the satellite through dish antennas. Now the user is
connected to the earth station via some telephone switch or some dedicated
link. The satellite receives the uplink frequency and the transponder present
inside the satellite does the processing function and frequency down
conversion in order to transmit the downlink signal at different frequency.
The earth station then receives the signal from the satellite through parabolic
dish antenna and processes it to get back the baseband signal. This baseband
signal is then transmitted to the respective user via dedicated link or other
terrestrial system. Previously satellite communication system used large
sized parabolic antennas with diameters around 30 meters because of the
very faint and weak signals received.
 But nowadays satellites have become much stronger, bigger
and powerful due to which antennas used have become automatically
smaller in size. Thus the earth station antennas are now not large in size as
the antennas used in olden days. A satellite communication system operates
and works in the millimeter and microwave wave frequency bands from 1
Ghz to 50 Ghz. There are various frequency bands utilized by satellites but
the most recognized of them is the uplink frequency of 6 Ghz and the
downlink frequency of 4 Ghz. Actually the uplink frequency band is 5.725
to 7.075 Ghz and the actual downlink frequency band is from 3.4 to 4.8 Ghz.
The major components of a Satellite Communication system is spacecraft
and one or more earth earths.

FUTURE COMMUNICATION SATELLITES:

The nature of future satellite communications systems will depend on the

demands of the market place the costs of manufacturing, launching, and
operating various satellite configurations; and the costs and capabilities
of competing systems - especially fiber optic cables, which can carry a
huge number of telephone conversations or television channels. In any
case, however, several approaches are now being tested or discussed by
satellite system designers.

One approach, which is being tested

experimentally, is the "switchboard in the sky" concept. NASA's
Advanced Communications Technology Satellite (ACTS) consists of a
relatively large geosynchronous satellite with many uplink beams and
many downlink beams, each of which covers a rather small spot on the
 earth. However, many of the beams are "steer able". The ACTS
satellite is also unique in that it operates at frequencies of 30 GHz on
the uplink and 20 GHz on the downlink. It is one of the first systems to
demonstrate and test such high frequencies for satellite
communications

The ACTS concept involves a single, rather

complicated, and expensive geosynchronous satellite. An alternative
approach is to deploy a "constellation" of low earth orbiting satellites. By
planning the orbits carefully, some number of satellites could provide
continuous contact with the entire earth, including the poles. By providing
relay links between satellites, it would be possible to provide
communications between any two points on earth, even though the user
might only be able to see any one satellite for a few minutes every hour.
Obviously, the success of such a system depends critically on the cost of
manufacturing and launching the satellites.

ADVANTAGES

• The coverage area of a satellite greatly exceeds that of a terrestrial

system.
• Transmission cost of a satellite is independent of the distance from the
center of the coverage area.
• Satellite to Satellite communication is very precise.
• Higher Bandwidths are available for use.

DISADVANTAGES
  Launching satellites into orbit is costly.
 Satellite bandwidth is gradually becoming used up.
 There is a larger propagation delay in satellite communication
than in terrestrial communication.
 The power generation is not easy as it relies only upon the solar
power panels for large power.
 Once satellites are launched into the sky, repairing of satellites
is very difficult.
 Orientation of the satellites gets changed due to the atmospheric
forces.

APPLICATIONS
• Telephony
• Satellite Television
• Direct broadcast satellite
• Mobile satellite technology
• Fixed service satellite
• Satellite radio
• Navigation
• Amateur radio
• Satellite Internet
• Military uses
 CONCLUSION
• Satellite communication has already changed our lives in a big way
and has continued to do so with its innovative and simpler
technologies.
• The present day world demands the implementation of newer,
simpler, efficient, and less expensive satellites and that too in large
numbers to meet the ever-growing greedy needs of mankind.
• If we continue to progress significantly towards our goal of
establishing global communication via satellites, then we can surely
make this giant world into a small one.