Consideration in Uplink

Design vs. Downlink Design

As an engineer who is working satellite link design, you would perform the design tasks putting
in mind simultaneously the process of designing the uplink and the downlink. However, you
would have to consider different parameters and different design elements for the uplink as
opposed to the design elements for the downlink. Some of the differences between designing the
uplink and designing the downlink are given below:

• Transmitting vs. Receiving: Although each link involves a transmission and a

reception process, from the point of view of the satellite the uplink part of the
satellite is a receiver, which means it requires less power to operate, while the
downlink part of the satellite is a transmitter, which means a significant amount of
the power generated on the satellite will be used for this process.
• Transmitted Power Availability: A satellite usually has a limited amount of power
to transmit for the downlink. Typically, a transponder may transmit an amount of
power on the order of 50 W. On the other hand, Earth stations may either have
theoretically an unlimited amount of power as in the case of large Earth stations with
1000s of Watts of power available, or a very limited amount of power as in the case
of satellite telephones with few Watts of power available (usually drawn from a
battery). So, when designing a satellite downlink, for example, you may compensate
for the relatively low transmitted power by having a larger satellite or earth station
antenna.
• Size of Antennas: An Earth station may be able to use large antennas with extremely
high gains, while the size of antennas on a satellite is usually limited by the launching
vehicle size. Nevertheless, large antennas may be inapplicable on some Earth stations
as it is the case for satellite telephones.
• Interference: Earth stations suffer from interference from other adjacent satellites
while Satellites suffer from transmission of other Earth stations
• Noise: Earth appears to be a large object from the point of view of a satellite,
resulting in a large amount of noise especially for wide-beam antennas on satellites,
while for an Earth station the sky is mostly cold at a fixed temperature of around 4 K,
especially at night (the remnants of the big bang).
• Cross-Polarization Interference: A satellite may transmit two signals at the same
frequency but with different polarizations. This causes a phenomenon known as cross
polarization in the case of rain over an Earth station receiving from a satellite and this
causes sometimes complete damage to the received signal.
 • Point-to-Point vs. Point-to-Zone Transmission: For the uplink, an Earth station
will always communicate with a single satellite, meaning that the boresights of the
Earth station transmitting antenna will be directed towards the satellite (Gain of
antenna is the maximum value). However, satellites providing coverage to a wide
region will have their boresights pointing to the center of the region and the power
will have a profile.

Acceptable C/N ratio

Satellite communication equipment (i.e., receivers) need to receive signals with sufficient C/N to
be able to recover the transmitted signal (or data in the case of digital transmission). Typically, a
receiver would have to receive a signal with a C/N ratio that is > 6 dB for the receiver to be able
to marginally work. For acceptable performance, the C/N ratio must be > 10 dB. For situations
where the C/N ratio is < 10 dB, error correction would generally have to be used to improve the
bit error rate in the case of digital transmission.

Satellite Coverage Profile

Satellites that provide coverage to a large region called a zone (as opposed to satellites that
transmit to a single point or a very small region on earth) cause a power profile that drops
smothery as you move away from the region at the center of the coverage area. For example, a
satellite that would provide coverage to the whole region of Saudi Arabia would probably have
the boresight of its antenna pointing to the center of its coverage region (assuming a simple
antenna with a circular aperture is used). As you move away in any direction, the received power
from the satellite would drop slowly until at the edge of the coverage region, the power would
drop by about 3-dB where the region at which the received power drops by 3-dB falls at the edge
of the transmitting antenna beam (where the beam drops by 3-dB relative to its maximum at the
boresight). This fact has a important effect on the design of the satellite links because it means
that when determining the C/N ratio of the link, you have to take in consideration the worst case
scenario represented by the coverage are at the edge of the transmission beam which would be
few dBs lower than the C/N ratio at the center of the beam.

In reality, satellites have very sophisticated antennas nowadays that allow them to cover a region
of Earth that is very precisely the desired region. See for example the coverage are of different
ArabSat satellites (www.arabsat.com).
Effective Bandwidth of a Satellite

The typical bandwidth of a commercial satellite is usually around 500 MHz. This bandwidth is
usually divided into smaller bands of 30 – 70 MHz that are separately processed by different
transponders on the satellite. However, effectively the bandwidth of a satellite may be many times
that bandwidth. The higher bandwidth is achieved using a couple of techniques that allow the
satellite to multiply its 500 MHz or so by 3, 4, 5 or even 7 times. These two methods that allow
achieving this high bandwidth are some form of carrier reuse, and are:

• Use of Antennas with Zone Beams: A wide-beam antenna can provide a very large
region of Earth’s surface with satellite coverage. This is sometimes inefficient, especially
when the coverage area of a satellite consists of different geographical regions that have
different cultures and different languages, for example. In this case, it may make sense to
transmit specific media contents to different regions within the coverage area of the
satellite. For example, consider a satellite that provides coverage to several geographical
regions with different languages and different cultures. The satellite may have a different
antenna broadcasting to each of the geographical regions separately. If two of the
geographical regions are relatively far away from each other such that the transmission
directed to one of these regions can be practically stopped from reaching the other
geographical region (by having the beam of the transmitting antennas be shaped to avoid
transmitting to the undesired region), the same frequency can be used for both
transmissions without the fear of interference of any of the transmissions with the other.
This can increase the bandwidth of a satellite by a factor of 2 to 3.
• Transmission of two Orthogonal Polarizations: Commercial GEO satellites are
stabilized in direction relative to space as they go in their orbit (satellites are either spun
(spinner satellites) or they are stabilized using momentum wheels (3-axis stabilized
satellites)). Therefore, the axis of the satellite that is parallel to the N-S axis of Earth will
remain at its direction all times. So, a satellite can transmit two linearly polarized
transmissions (Horizontal and Vertical) using two antennas that are perpendicular to each
other. The two transmissions of the satellite can be received separately using two fixed
antennas that are placed in the same polarity to the desired transmitting antenna. The
interference of the transmission of one of the polarizations on the other polarization is
generally very low in clear atmospheric conditions. The interference of the two
transmissions becomes significant during rain. This is one of the main reasons that cause
the reception of some satellite transmissions during rain to become very difficult and
signal loss becomes possible (this interference is called cross-polarization interference).
The use of two perpendicular polarizations effectively doubles the bandwidth of the
satellite.