Links via geostationary or low-orbit satellites.
Satellite links use geostationary (36 000 km, 250 ms delay), medium (GNSS) and low Earth orbits (Starlink, 550 km, ~30 ms) with transponders, high-gain antennas and strong coding. Rain fade at Ku/Ka bands; Doppler in LEO; handovers between satellites.
A GEO TV satellite broadcasts to dishes over a whole continent.
Satellites provide communication where cables are impractical, so they serve ships, aircraft, rural areas and global broadcasting.
Links via geostationary or low-orbit satellites.
Satellites provide communication where cables are impractical, so they serve ships, aircraft, rural areas and global broadcasting.
They are about 36,000 km above the equator, so the signal takes a quarter of a second for the round trip, which affects real-time services.
A group of satellites close to Earth that give low delay coverage, but each covers a smaller area and needs many satellites.
Typical applications include providing broadband to a remote farm through a geostationary satellite, tracking assets across the globe with a low-orbit constellation and delivering television to millions of homes from one satellite.
Study "Cellular systems" first (topic 94 of 101 in Signals, Control & Comms). It covers the groundwork this topic builds on.
C/N and G/T. Orbit types. VSAT.
A GEO TV satellite broadcasts to dishes over a whole continent.
The next topic is "Optical fibre communication", which builds directly on this one.
It is classed as Advanced in Signals, Control & Comms (topic 95 of 101). It is an advanced topic. It assumes you are comfortable with the intermediate topics in Signals, Control & Comms.
Want to practise? Open the interactive course for quick checks, quizzes, simulations and progress tracking.