COMMUNICATION

SYSTEMS 1
Dr. Ali Nagi Nosary

Sana’a University | Faculty of Engineering 2021

 3
Geostationary
Orbit
• Introduction
• Antenna Look Angles
• Sun Transit Orbit
3 Introduction

A satellite in a geostationary orbit appears to be stationary with respect

to the earth, hence the name geostationary.
Three conditions are required for an orbit to be geostationary:

• The satellite must travel eastward at the same rotational speed

as the earth.
• The orbit must be circular.
• The inclination of the orbit must be zero

Kepler’s third law may be used to find the radius of the orbit (for a
circular orbit, the semimajor axis is equal to the radius).
3 GEOs
3
Antenna Look Angles
The coordinates to which an earth station antenna must be pointed to
communicate with a satellite are called look angles . Two look angles,
azimuth and elevation angles, are required at the antenna so that it
points directly at the satellite.
• Azimuth measured from north eastward to the projection of the
satellite path on the local horizontal plane
• Elevation : angle measured upward from the local horizontal
plane
Three pieces of information that are needed to determine the look
angles for the geostationary orbit are:
• The earth-station latitude, denoted here by
• The earth-station longitude, denoted here by
• The longitude of the subsatellite point, denoted here by
(often this is just referred to as the satellite longitude)
3
Antenna Look Angles
3 Antenna Look Angles

ES the position of the earth station

SS the subsatellite point,
S the satellite
d is the range from the earth station to the satellite
3 Antenna Look Angles
3 Antenna Look Angles
Azimuth angle Az

The value of Az depends of

the position of the ES in on
the earth (four scenarios)
3 Antenna Look Angles
Elevation angle El

From the law of cosine, the range d

can be found as follows:

From the law of sine, the elevation angle

El can be found as follows:

𝑠𝑖𝑛 𝜎 𝑠𝑖𝑛 𝑏
=
𝑎𝐺𝑆𝑂 𝑑
3 Example 3.1
3 Example 3.2
3 Antenna Look Angles
3 Earth Eclipse of Satellite
3
3.7 Sun Transit Outage

3.8 Launching to Orbits

Required (read the textbook)