Sunday, February 28, 2016

Beam Hopping, Beam Forming, Frequency Reuse, and the Quest for Maximizing Satellite Throughput

Satellite communication is amazing in so many ways.

Start with launching a machine into space and expect it to operate precisely while managing to harvest solar energy and hold attitude and position.

Add to the mix operating at frequencies that frankly are absurd.

Wide-band transponders got us this far, but their utility now is just a gateway to the future of spot beams.

Spot beams are formed by higher gain antennas with smaller beam widths than continental wide beam transponders.  The beam width is a function of aperture and of frequency.  A given aperture delivers a smaller beam width with higher frequency.  A given frequency delivers a smaller beam width with a bigger aperture.

The last piece of the puzzle is the part that is in play, that of how to switch the information between the beams, and how many beams can you use?

Friday, February 26, 2016

A Broadband User Average Throughput is 150 kbps, not 25 Mbps


The following are all clipped excerpts driving the point that a good broadband experience averages only 150 kbps...the contended data rate...not the headline "advertised rate of 25 Mbps.