Advancing the art of satellite communications - Foreign competition spurs NASA Satcom research
Abstract
Major advances in satellite communications technology in the US and Japan are detailed. Japan's Ka-band services aboard CS-2a and CS-2b, launched in 1973, are discussed, as well as plans for the ECS-2 and ACTS-E (Advanced Communications Technology Satellite) experimental projects. The ACTS-E would carry both a broadcasting payload operating at 27/22 GHz and a communication payload using the 50/40 GHz band. Japan's fourth generation CS-4, for start-up in the first half of the 1990's, is described as a 2-ton craft carrying 60-70 transponders, and providing capacity for up to 100,000 equivalent two-way voice channels via 10 or 20 scanning spotbeams. NASA's new programs are described as well, including the ACTS program, with a communications payload embodying signal-processing, message-routing, and traffic-management techniques, and the MSAT program, concentrating on narrow-band transmissions. Included are the technical description, operational parameters, and schematic layout of NASA's ACTS, and block diagrams of baseband processor for low burst rate communications switching on the ACTS.
- Publication:
-
Interavia
- Pub Date:
- January 1985
- Bibcode:
- 1985Inter..40...25B
- Keywords:
-
- Nasa Programs;
- Payloads;
- Satellite-Borne Instruments;
- Spacecraft Communication;
- Technology Assessment;
- Transponders;
- Acts;
- Block Diagrams;
- Japan;
- Traffic Control;
- Launch Vehicles and Space Vehicles