The Future for Domestic Communications Satellites - Lease or Buy

The demand for leased satellite communications services is growing at such a rate that a dedicated leasing satellite system is envisioned to deal with the demand. The most economical solution would be three similarly designed 24-channel capacity satellites with on-orbit antenna beam reconfiguration offering regional C-band coverage and situated over America, Africa, and Asia. Spatial frequency reuse is not considered necessary until at least the next generation. A two-meter antenna projecting a three dB beamwidth nearly three degrees in diameter at 4 GHz can achieve global coverage with only 19 adjacent beams at the aforementioned locations. Circular polarization will be continued in leasing. It is proposed to operate dual orthogonal polarization frequency reuse for uplink and downlink to increase the available capacity. The communications repeater is discussed in detail together with a glossary of terms and an economic analysis of the competition from dedicated domestic satellites.