3.

6 COMMUNICATIONS SUBSYSTEMS 69

~ COMMUNICATIONS SUBSYSTEMS
DesCription of the Communication System
A communications satellite exists to provide a platform in geostationary orbit
c- &3erelaying of voice, video, and data communications. All other subsystems
s j:e spacecraft exist solely to support the ~ommunications system, although
:&:i may represent only a small part of the volume, weight, and cost of the
;-.oo:rcraftin orbit. Since it is the communication system that earns the revenue
~- die system operator, communications satellites are designed to provide the
~~t traffic capacity possible. The growth in capacity is well illustrated in Fig-
d 3.9 for the Intelsat system. Successive satellites have become larger, heavier,
~ more costly, but the rate at which traffic capacity has increased has been
~ greater, resulting in a lower cost per telephone circuit with each succeeding
~ation of satellite. The introduction of switched-beam technology and on-
~c:ardprocessing in high-capacity satellites will offer a further increase in capacity
:=.the late 1980s and 1990s. These topics are discussed in Section 3.7.
In the design of a satellite communication system, the downlink from the
~llite to the earth station is usually the most critical part. The satellite trans-
:ozrtterhas limited output power and the earth station is at least 36,000 km away,
St' the received power level, even with large aperture earth station antennas, is
'ferj small and rarely exceeds 10-10 W. For the system to perform satisfactorily,
;:;;esignal power must exceed the power of the noise generated in the receiver
~ between 5 and 25 dB, depending on the bandwidth of the transmitted signal
~ the modulation scheme used. With low-power transmitters, narrow receiver
~dwidths have to be used to maintain the required signal-to-noise ratios. Higher
rower transmitters and satellites with directional antennas enable wider band-
~dths to be utilized, increasing the capacity of the satellite.
Early communications satellites were fitted with transponders of 250 or
500 MHz bandwidth, but had low-gain antennas and transmitters of 1 or 2 W
output power. The earth station receiver could not achieve an adequate signal-
to-noise ratio when the full bandwidth was used with the result that the system
was power limited. j
Later generations of communications satellites have also been power limited
because they cannot use the RF bandwidth as efficiently as a terrestrial micro- ~
wave communication system, but have steadily improved in bandwidth utilization
efficiency, as seen in Figure 3.9. The total channel capacity of a satellite that
uses a 500-MHz band at 6/4 GHz can be increased only if the bandwidth can
be increased or reused. The trend in high-capacity satellites has been to reuse
the available bands by employing several directional beams at the same frequency
(spatial frequency reuse) and orthogonal polarizations at the same frequency (po-
larization frequency reuse). INTELSA T V and some domestic satellites also use
both the 6/4 GHz and 14/11 GHz bands to obtain more bandwidth; for example,
INTELSA T V achieves an effective bandwidth of 2250 MHz in its communica-
tion system within a 500 MHz band at 6/4 GHz and 250 MHz band at 14/11 GHz
by a combination of spatial and polarization frequency reuse.

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