Satellite communication applications

Earth observation

Provide information about the ocean, ice, land environments, and the atmosphere.

Example: carbon dioxide monitoring, weather and climate monitoring, geophysical measurements for earthquakes, global wildfire monitoring, crop yield monitoring

Transport and Logistics

Current driving forces of Satcom

Large constellation of low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites

Enhanced broadband and low latency

Integration with terrestrial telecommunications

New services and architectures

Satellite-based cloud and edge computing

Satellite-integrated network architecture

Satellite-assisted high-altitude platforms (HAPs)

Internet of Things applications

Satellite communication system

A satellite communications system consists of a space segment, a ground segment, and a control segment.

Fixed-Satellite Service (FSS)

Radio communication service between Earth stations at a given position when one or more satellites are used.

Geostationary Orbit

Geostationary Orbit (GEO) satellites are parked over the equator at the altitude of around 35,700 kilometers.

MEO Satellites

Example: GPS and Galileo navigation systems

Need a constellation to serve a large Earth’s surface.

Higher throughput: can achieve a throughput of multiple gigabits per second.

LEO satellite network characteristics

Low latency and increased throughput

Enables large data transfer in real time.

Redundancy in satellite constellation for secure and reliable communication services.

Example constellation size

Starlink 42,000

Amazon Kuiper 3,236

Telesat 298

OneWeb 650

Avoiding Traffic Congestion

Use extremely high-frequency (EHF) bands (for example, Ka, Q/V) to support higher throughput.

A LEO satellite constellation can decrease the chance of signal jamming due to the constant motions of LEO satellites.

Satellite Communications

With the deployment of 3G systems, new satellite communications emerged to provide multimedia services in addition to the telephony services supported from 2G.