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1945–2010: 65 Years of Satellite History From Early Visions to Latest Missions

Article in Proceedings of the IEEE · November 2011

DOI: 10.1109/JPROC.2011.2159467 · Source: dx.doi.org

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 1

1945-2010: 65 Years of Satellite History from

Early Visions to Latest Missions

Barry G. Evans and Paul T. Thompson

Centre for Communication Systems Research, University of Surrey, UK

Giovanni E. Corazza, Alessandro Vanelli-Coralli and E. Alberto Candreva

Department of Electronics, Computer Science and Systems, University of Bologna, ITALY

Abstract—This paper takes a broad view on the history and the present status of satellite communications

and broadcasting. The necessary starting point of this overview is the visionary papers produced by Sir

Arthur C. Clarke and John Pierce. This was the real dawn of the satellite communication era.

This paper attempts to explain the “fil rouge” of the evolution of satellite technologies across six decades,

analyzing successes and failures of past satellite missions, and concluding with a picture of future satellite

communications.

Index Terms—Broadcast Satellite, History, Mobile Satellite Communications, Satellites.

 2

I. INTRODUCTION

In the 65 years since its inception satellite communications has been, and still is today, a vital key part of

peoples everyday life – receiving TV and radio; providing essential communications to remote land areas

and on the sea or in the air; allowing us to see and predict our climate / environment as well as allowing us

to actively position and navigate.

This paper attempts to chart the progress of satellite communications from early concepts and visions to

modern day implementations. Indeed, over a few decades, progress in all satellite communications field has

been quite intense. In this paper we mainly focused upon commercial service oriented developments,

regretfully neglecting most of the tremendous work achieved in NASA and ESA as well as in other space

agencies, which nonetheless certainly had important impact and influence on most of the developments we

will discuss. The intensive and comprehensive work relating to defense related satellite communications

has been also given a light touch as will be seen from later material. To those who have made major

contributions in these areas, we apologize in advance.

The two major advantages of satellites for communications lie in their wide coverage (hence the

predominance of broadcast application), which means they can reach areas that are uneconomic for

terrestrial provision, and their ability to quickly install new services over the slower terrestrial roll out. The

latter should not be misconstrued as a competition between satellite and terrestrial, but an opportunity for

them to be complementary and synergistic. In comparison with terrestrial systems, satellites have stringent

constraints in terms of power and allocated spectrum, which can make them less attractive in some

scenarios. In essence, both can be useful to provide cost efficient communications to the user, and system

design will drive the selection depending on the contingent requirements.

In this paper, we will develop the overview of satellite communications considering early visions,

international systems, broadcasting, mobile communications, and broadband satellite access. In our

discussion, we will run across seven decades classified as follows:

 3

 1940-50’s—the decade of visions of satellite communications;

 1950-60’s---the realization of the visions and the early experimentation;

 1960-70’s---the era of the large International organizations and transoceanic links;

 1970-80’s---the introduction of broadcast and mobiles and the move to company use;

 1980-90’s---from national to individual usage and liberalization;

 1990-2000—innovations in business use and constellations as well as Geostationary Earth Orbits

(GEOs);

 2000-2010----privatization and focus onto new technologies;

The evolution of satellite communications is depicted in Figure 1 and we address the key elements of this

in later sections.

Today satellite communications constitute a multibillion dollar worldwide industry which touches all of our

lives in one way or another and will continue to expand and flourish in the future. In attempting to forecast

the future we do so with some intrepidness as we very much doubt that we will be as prophetic as the

original visionaries!

Satellite
Operator
Sputnik

Early
Telecoms Intelsat
Company Full
Intelsat

Corporate Inmarsat
User
VSAT

Consumer Satellite IP over Satellite

DTH
PCS Satellite Multimedia
& DVB-RCS

1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010

Figure 1: Evolution of civilian satellite communications

 4

The organization of this paper is first to discuss the early visions (II) & the formative years and then to

present developments in application areas, covering briefly military systems in (III). This is followed by a

review of the development of international systems (IV); broadcasting systems (V) and mobiles systems

(VI). The paper then rounds off with a review of VSAT and Broadband systems (VII) with conclusions and

future expectations presented in (VIII).

II. EARLY VISIONS

The concept of satellite communications is normally accredited to an Englishman, Sir Arthur C. Clarke,

because of a famous paper [1] published in the British publication called ‘Wireless World’. However, Dr

Clarke produced at least two documents prior to this in which elements of the idea of satellite

communications were presented. He published a letter [2] in the ‘Letters to the Editor’ column of ‘Wireless

World’ on ‘Peacetime uses for V2’ in February 1945 in which he postulates an ‘artificial satellite’ in a 24-

hour orbit and even goes on to suggest the use of three such satellites at 120 degree spacing. Modestly, he

finishes the article with “I’m afraid this isn’t going to be of the slightest use to our post war planners, but I

think is the ultimate solution to the problem.”

He wrote a more extensive paper on 25 May 1945 entitled ‘The space station: its radio applications’ which

he circulated to several council members of the British Interplanetary Society (whose motto is aptly From

imagination to reality) who gave it their whole-hearted support. The top copy is now in the archives of the

Smithsonian Institute in Washington DC and a facsimile is published in ‘How the World was One’ [3]

along with a copy of his later and now famous Wireless World paper of October 1945. In this paper Arthur

C. Clarke proposed that three communications stations be placed in synchronous 24-hour orbit which could

form a global communications system and make worldwide communications possible. The

communications equipment would be installed and operated in a space station where it would be

maintained by its crew. To date, we have seen hundreds of unstaffed communications satellites launched
 5

into geosynchronous orbit for commercial and military use, with the newest spacecraft lasting fifteen or

more years without maintenance.

Sir Arthur C. Clarke was not the only person thinking about communications satellites. In 1946, the US

Army’s Project Rand pointed out in a classified study the potential commercial use of synchronous

communications satellites. Unfortunately, this report remained secret for so long that it had little impact.

In 1954, John Pierce [4] of Bell Laboratories considered the communications satellite problem

independently of Clarke. To Pierce there seemed little reason at that time to replace overland cables or

terrestrial microwave relays with satellites. There were two general possibilities for such satellites: passive

reflectors that would bounce the radio waves between ground antennas, and active repeaters which would

amplify the received signal and retransmit it to the ground. Either kind of satellite could be placed in

medium-altitude orbits, requiring a constellation of many satellites and steerable antennas on the ground, or

one satellite in synchronous orbit, where it would appear to remain stationary at one location. It seemed to

Pierce that nothing practical could be done to facilitate satellite communications, although the

communications equipment was not the problem. The invention of the transistor, the solar cell and the

travelling-wave tube (TWT) amplifier in the 1940s and 1950s allowed relatively compact highly reliable

repeaters to be built. The difficulty was the rockets. It was not until the development of suitable launch

vehicles that these concepts could be realized. Launch vehicles of the power required became available in

the mid 1960s as a by-product of the military development of the intercontinental ballistic missile.

Arthur C Clarke, UK [1917 – 2008] John Pierce, USA [1910 – 2002] Harold Rosen, USA [1926-]
 6

Figure 2: Key people-Visionaries and Pioneers

Several private companies in the United States, including RCA and Lockheed in the early 1950s,

investigated the possibility of communications satellites before the government became interested. The

Hughes Aircraft Company spent company money from 1959 to 1961 to demonstrate the feasibility of a

design for synchronous satellites before convincing NASA and the USA Defense Department to fund the

rest of the project. However, by far the greatest activity was in AT&T’s Bell Telephone Laboratories.

The V-2 was the catalyst for the artificial unmanned satellite. In the days of early rocketry researchers

concentrated on manned flight. There was also skepticism regarding radio waves penetrating the upper

atmosphere. More important, in those years of radio valves, there simply was no adequate electronic

technology. For these reasons, radiocommunications studies are conspicuously absent from the early

astronautical literature. Beginning in 1945, given the large-scale rocket technology, wartime advances in

electronics and the development of transistors, proposals for satellites started to be published [1],[5].

In 1955 Radio Moscow had announced a prospective satellite launch, but this was not taken seriously. On

29 July 1955 the USA announced that it would ‘launch small earth-circling satellites’ as part of its

contribution to the International Geophysical Year (Project Vanguard) [6].

On 4 October 1957, the Soviets launched SPUTNIK 1. It was not until the 31 January 1958 that America

launched its first satellite, the Explorer 1, but the USSR countered this by launching a 3 tons ‘flying

laboratory’, and thus the space race had begun. It was to be the space race that accelerated the development

of the technology and the will to launch satellites into space. However, it was only when the race settled

down that worthy application satellites began to be developed and launched, riding on the spin-offs from

the race.

It is worth noting that Arthur C. Clarke’s book ‘How the World was One’ [3] was ‘Dedicated to the real

fathers of the communications satellite, John Pierce and Harold Rosen, by the godfather’. It is therefore

reasonable to assume that Dr. Clarke was the initial visionary and others, especially these two, were

pioneers. Both had the backing of significant commercial organizations behind them (AT&T and Hughes
 7

Aircraft Company, respectively) and therefore had the resources to push the pioneering efforts required at

that time.

The early days of satellite communications comprised many experiments and fact-finding missions which

eventually led to the active transponder-based satellites in common use today. The background of these

early days is too extensive to detail here but Table 1 gives some basic information on these activities [7].
 8

Satellite Country Launch date Notes

SCORE USA 18 Dec1958 active for 13 days

ECHO A-10 USA 13 May1960 failure
ECHO 1 USA 12 Aug 1960 100 ft balloon
COURIER 1A USA 18 Aug 1960 launch failure
COURIER 1B USA 4 Oct 1960 lost command capability after 17 days
ECHO (AVT–1) USA 14 Jan 1962 failure, balloon ruptured
TELSTAR 1 USA 10 July 1962 ok until 21 Feb 1963
ECHO (AVT–2) USA 18 July 1962
RELAY 1 USA 12 Dec 1962 1 transponder, ok until February 1965
SYNCOM 1 USA 14 Feb 1963 communications lost at orbit injection
TELSTAR 2 USA 7 May 1963 ok until May 1965
SYNCOM 2 USA 26 July 1963 used until 1966, turned off April 1969
RELAY 2 USA 21 Jan 1964 used until September 1965
ECHO 2 USA 25 Jan 1964 used with USSR, decayed June 1969
MOLNIYA 1–F1 USSR 19 Feb 1964 failure
SYNCOM 3 USA 19 Aug 1964 used until 1966, turned off April 1969
INTELSAT 1 (Early Bird) USA 6 April 1965 used until Jan 1969, temp use Jun–Aug 1969
MOLNIYA 1–1 USSR 23 April 1965 decayed 16 August 1979

Table 1: Early communications satellites

Echo Balloons (Courtesy of NASA) Telstar (Courtesy of NASA) Early Bird (Courtesy of NASA)

Figure 3: Key Early Developments

III. MILITARY SYSTEM DEVELOPMENT

As indicated earlier the main focus of this article is on civilian satellite communications. Nonetheless, the

following presents a brief summary of military system developments. Satellite communication is

particularly attractive for military applications in that it provides a highly reliable and high-capacity service

over a wide coverage area. The service can be available at short notice in virtually any part of the world

without reliance on any national communications infrastructure.

 9

Twenty eight Initial Defense Communication Satellite Program (IDCSP) satellites were launched starting

in 1966 with the launches spanning a period of 10 years. The IDCSP satellites operated in orbits slightly

below geostationary orbits.

In 1966, there was an agreement between the United States of America and the United Kingdom on

military satellite communications. It was a key step in the development of the U.K. Skynet programme.

Skynet 1A was launched for UK use in November 1969 with NATO-1 being launched in November 1970.

Between 1967 and 1969, the Lincoln Experiment Satellites (LES) made by the Lincoln Laboratory were

launched to better facilitate understanding of the role of satellite communications for military use.

After these initial systems many followed such as the Defense Satellite Communication System (DSCS)

and FLTSATCOM.

Table 2 indicates the dovetailing of civilian and military satellite communications system from 1966 – 1980.

Launch Date Launch Date

SYSTEM (1st in series) (1st in series)
Civilian Military
Telstar July 1962 ---
Early Bird (Intelsat I) August 1965 ---
IDSCP --- June 1966
Intelsat II October 1966 ---
Intelsat III September 1968 ---
Skynet 1A (UK) --- November 1969
NATO-1 --- March 1970
Intelsat-IV January 1971 ---
NATO-2 --- February 1971
DSCS-2 --- November 1971
Skynet 2A --- January 1974
MARISAT February 1976 ---
OTS-1 September 1977 ---
Fltsatcom --- February 1978
OTS-2 May 1978 ---
Syracuse-1 (France) --- January 1980
DSCS-3 --- October 1985
Intelsat-V December 1980 ---

Table 2: Key satellite communications launches 1960-1980

 10

The special needs of the military users have often led to the deployment of technologies that are not

prominent in commercial systems. Examples are Electromagnetic Pulse protection, radiation hardening,

anti-jam features, nulling antennas and inter-satellite links.

For more details on the development of military satellite communications see references [8]to [10].

IV. INTERNATIONAL SYSTEM DEVELOPMENT

INTELSAT

In 1962 the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom held discussions on forming an international

satellite organization based upon the concept established in the US Congress Communications Satellite Act

of 1962 [11]. Later discussions, in 1963, were expanded to include most of the European countries. Serious

negotiations were begun in Rome in February 1964 at which participants included representatives from

Western Europe, the USA and Canada. Shortly thereafter, Australia and Japan were included, recognizing

that together these countries accounted for some 85 per cent of the world’s international telephone traffic.

In the remarkably brief period of just over six months, two agreements entered into force and the new

international entity, INTELSAT, was created. These interim arrangements came into force for the 11

founder members in August 1964. Definite arrangements came into force on 12 February 1973. The role of

INTELSAT undertook major changes in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when it was released from the

legacy of being an intergovernmental organization (which, however, promoted interesting technical

developments, as per [12]) and allowed to operate as a private company in a free market [13]. This came

about when, following representations from the private industry, the US congress passed the Open Market

Reorganization for the Betterment of International Telecommunications (ORBIT) Act to privatize the

international organization. Thus in July 2001 INTELSAT became a private company. Rather ironically, in

July 2006 it acquired Panamsat which was one of the leading proponents / competitors in the privatization

era. INTELSAT has based its corporate headquarters in Luxembourg, with a majority of staff located at the

INTELSAT offices in Washington, DC.

 11

EUTELSAT

In 1964, the European Conference on Satellite Communications (CETS), which was originally created to

coordinate a European position in the INTELSAT negotiations, began to focus attention on a possible

European satellite programme. The objective of this work was to give Europe, and in particular its industry,

technical capability in this area based on an experimental satellite programme. 1966 saw the formation and

first meeting of the European Space Conference (ESC), designed to harmonize the work of the different

European bodies dealing with space activities. The European satellite programme under study was

originally conceived for the provision of Eurovision television programmes for the European Broadcasting

Union (EBU) as well as some telephony in Europe and the Mediterranean basin.

In August 1970, a European telecommunications satellite working group (SET) was established to

collaborate with ESRO/ELDO (the two organizations later merged in the European Space Agency, ESA) in

carrying out studies in this area. At the December 1971 ESRO/ELDO Council meeting this was approved

and work on the experimental satellite, to be known as the Orbital Test Satellite (OTS), commenced at the

end of 1972. The operational phase satellites were to be known as the European Regional Communications

Satellite System (ECS). In March 1977, a conference was held to prepare for the establishment of an

interim organization to manage the space segment, called Interim EUTELSAT. As a result an agreement

was entered into force on 30 June 1977.

OTS–2 was successfully launched on 11 May 1978 (after an unsuccessful attempt in September 1977) and

was to be utilized initially for three years. However, on the completion of three years in orbit, the satellite

was still working properly, and special financial arrangements were concluded with ESA to keep it there. In

1979 Interim EUTELSAT began to consider arrangements for the definitive organization. After much

debate the definitive agreements entered into force on 20 July 1985.

ECS flight 1 was successfully launched on 16 June 1983 and followed by four more in the period up to July

1988. Unfortunately, flight 3 suffered a launch failure in 1985.

 12

The period 1983–1984 witnessed considerable activity in the field of future programmes. The initial system

was unable to adequately provide sufficient capacity beyond 1990 with the resources available under the

EUTELSAT-ESA arrangement. It was concluded that this situation could be addressed by procuring

enhanced satellites which could be available for operation by the end of 1989. The first of the Eutelsat-II

satellite was launched in January 1991 with more to follow shortly. In 1995, EUTELSAT provided the first

digital TV broadcast in Europe using the Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) standard.

In line with the general telecommunications deregulation globally EUTELSAT was privatized in July 2001.

INMARSAT

Since the early XX century, the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) Convention enforced the use of wireless

communications for all ships beyond a certain tonnage. It was first issued after the Titanic disaster, and it

had a natural evolution from radio-telegraphy towards radio-telephony and then to satellite

communications. In 1966 the International Maritime Organisation (IMO), based in London, undertook

studies on the possibility of satisfying the communication needs of the maritime mobile service (MMS) by

the use of satellite communications and the need to provide radio frequencies for this purpose. In 1967 the

International Telecommunication Union (ITU) World Administrative Radio Conference (WARC) for the

MMS adopted a recommendation relating to the utilization of space communication techniques in the MMS

outlining further work to be conducted prior to the 1971 WARC. Following the allocation of frequencies to

MMS service by WARC 1971, it was decided that studies should be undertaken to establish an organization

and introduction of an international maritime satellite system in full cooperation with the

telecommunication authorities of its member governments. Three conferences would be needed before the

INMARSAT convention was adopted in September 1976 and the formal INMARSAT organization was

established on 16 July 1979.

The UK government was a prime mover in all aspects of establishing INMARSAT. It funded the early

European-based MARECS system to the tune of 39 per cent of the total and made way for the

establishment of the INMARSAT headquarters in London.

 13

In line with the deregulation trends, INMARSAT was converted into a private company in 1999. The

Company was first listed on the London Stock Exchange in 2005.

Figure 4 indicates the magnitude and growth of the revenues earned by the three major satellite consortia.

Growth is still ongoing with no evidence of diminishing interest in satellite services.

4500

4000 INMARSAT
3500 EUTELSAT
INTELSAT
3000
Revenue, $million

2500

2000

1500

1000

500

0
1964

1966

1968

1970

1972

1974

1976

1978

1980

1982

1984

1986

1988

1990

1992

1994

1996

1998

2000

2002

2004

2006

2008
Year

Figure 4: Intelsat, Eutelsat & INMARSAT Annual revenues

Goonhilly 1 Antenna (BT plc) Hong Kong Earth Station (Cable & Wireless) Jamaica Fairview Earth Station
(Cable & Wireless)
Figure 5: Earth Stations that operated with Intelsat Satellites around the World
 14

V. BROADCAST SATELLITES

In this Section, we intend to review some of the most significant missions that carried broadcast payloads

on-board. Before we dwell into that, it is worthwhile to review the concept of direct broadcasting by

satellite (DBS), i.e., the idea that it is indeed possible to use a satellite to deliver video content directly to

the homes of the final users. Actually, communication satellites had been used to relay television signals

across regions and continents since the first half of the 1960’s, notably with the Telstar satellite (1963) and

INTELSAT I (1965). However, it is only during the 1970’s that the feasibility of closing the link budget

directly to the homes of the final users became a reality. Sir Arthur C. Clarke stated in his visionary paper

[1] that “A true broadcast service, giving constant field strength at all times over the whole globe would be

invaluable, not to say indispensable, in a world society”. This was indeed prophetic: for example, the

launch of the Canadian satellite ANIK-A1 in 1972 allowed the population of Northern Territories to have

finally live television broadcasting, albeit via a repeater network. Before ANIK-A1, they had to rely on

taped programs mailed by southern broadcasting centers, which kept them almost one full week behind in

news and sports.

GEO orbits are commonly used for broadcasting and other services. At an altitude of 35,786 km above the

mean sea level, the abovementioned difficulties in closing the link budget can be readily understood.

Figure 6 compares the GEO orbit with respect to Low Earth Orbit (LEO) and Highly Elliptical Earth Orbit

(HEO) assuming that these orbits were all on the same plane. LEOs are used for some of the systems

described later in Section VI-A, while High Earth Orbit and Highly Elliptical Orbit are used to overcome

the limitations of GEO orbit (i.e. the difference in coverage between equatorial zones and polar zones, and

the high likelihood of having a shadowed path in case of low-elevation links), thanks to the possibility to

have “slow” orbiting satellites at any selected latitude.

 15

GEO
Satellite

Iridium
satellite

HEO
satellite Globalstar
satellite

Figure 6: LEO, GEO and HEO orbits compared in a hypothetical common plane

The first attempt in direct broadcasting via satellite was ATS-6 in the US in 1974, followed by Ekran, the

first Soviet Direct-To-Home television satellite launched in 1976. ATS-6 satellite still used analog

television to broadcast educational and health programs to communities in the northern part of the United

States. To obtain the required Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) of about 50 dB [14], the receiving antennas had

to be 3m in diameter, while the satellite was equipped with two 50W S-band TWT transmitters. After some

experiments were carried out, the satellite was then moved from its Longitude 94° West position to

Longitude 35° East, to start the “Satellite Instructional Television Experiment (SITE)” [15] in collaboration

with the Indian Space Agency (ISRO).

The first direct-to-home operations in US started in the 90’s, namely by United States Satellite

Broadcasting (USSB) and PrimeStar.

The case of USSB is peculiar: it was founded in 1981 by Stanley S. Hubbard, who spent almost a decade in

raising interest and collecting partnerships. The company started transmitting twelve years later, in 1993,

using a satellite (DBS-1) built in partnership with Hughes Electronics Corporation. During this long
 16

incubatory period, PrimeStar, a consortium amongst cable operators, managed to start their own

broadcasting satellite service, being thus the first medium-powered direct broadcast satellite system in the

US. To render the scenario even more interesting, the DBS-1 satellite did not only host USSB transponders,

but also those of DirecTV, which was founded by Hughes to co-operate on the same satellite. The DBS-1

satellite had 16 main transponders in Ku Band and a maximum EIRP (Effective Isotropic Radiated Power)

of 52 dBW. The fact that USSB and DirecTV had a newer satellite, requiring smaller user antennas, gave

them a considerable advantage over PrimeStar. The next move for DirecTV was to acquire USSB in 1998,

and a year later DirecTV acquired PrimeStar. Today DirecTV is estimated to have more than 18 million

subscribers.

Europe and Japan followed a different path with respect to US. In fact, the 1977 WARC awarded orbital

slots for satellite broadcasting to Europe and Japan, that hence started experimenting in this field. In that

year, Japan had a favorable technological, normative, and economic situation for satellite broadcasting,

which gave rise to rapid development. A first experimental satellite was launched in 1978, and after a brief

and unlucky start of transmissions in 1984, in 1989 the Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK) started

regular service using analog NTSC standard. Growth was extremely rapid since then. Satellite broadcasting

subscribers were estimated at more than 10 millions in 1996 and 14 millions in 2000. In December 2000, a

digital broadcasting service started, based on the ITU-R standardized interface ISDB-S [16][17], operating

in the Broadcast Satellite Service (BSS) band, from 11.7 to 12.2 GHz. The switch off from analog

transmission to digital transmission was performed together with a renewal in satellite technology: the first

generation of satellites, identified as BS, was built by Toshiba with assistance from General Electric, and

carried two 100W transponders (plus one spare) in Ku band. The last satellites of the BS generation carried

3 active and 2 back-up transponders for the same band.

The second satellite generation, identified as B-SAT presented distinct improvements in transmitted power

and number of available transponders: for example B-SAT 2 satellites had the capability to handle four

television channels, with signals amplified by 130W TWTAs. The last generation in orbit at present, B-
 17

SAT 3, has 12 transponders, 8 of which are used simultaneously. Due to the specific geographical position,

the principle of satellite co-location has been used extensively for Japan, using a single orbital position at

110° East.

In Europe a French-German satellite, TV-SAT1, was launched in 1987: unfortunately a solar panel and the

uplink antenna failed to deploy immediately after launch. After some testing, this satellite was put into a

graveyard orbit and its functions were taken over by the French satellite TDF-1.

1989 was an important year for European satellite broadcasting, since the more successful TV-SAT 2,

Olympus, and Astra satellites were launched. Astra started with 2 satellites having 16 channels each. The

broadcast band was at 11.2-11.45 GHz, and the coverage area was Western Europe, with satellites located

at 19.2° East. The system operated with linear polarization and the TWTA had an output of 47 W [14].

After twenty years, the follow-up company SES Astra operates 16 satellites, which are displaced in five

orbital slots exploiting the concept of “co-location”, with service area including all of Europe and Northern

Africa, reaching more than 100 million households.

A general trend in satellite broadcasting during these decades has been the shift from C-band and analog

broadcasting to Ku-Band and digital broadcasting: at the very beginning of satellite broadcasting, the users

installed large dishes (2-3 m) to directly receive the signals, while today small dishes (less than 1m in

diameter) are sufficient [18]. The latest trends in satellite broadcasting include the transmission of high-

definition TV channels, 3D TV services, and interactivity via a return channel.

VI. MOBILE COMMUNICATIONS BY SATELLITES

In this section, we will discuss some of the most significant satellite missions devoted to mobile

communications, considering both point-to-point communications via satellites and satellite broadcasting to

mobile terminals. This field has both commercial and strategic relevance, because mobile satellite

communications include maritime and aeronautical communications, as well as land-mobile services to any
 18

Earth zone with insufficient terrestrial communications. For the above reasons, this segment is facing a

constant evolution towards higher throughput in more challenging scenarios and lower user fees [19][20]

[21].

A. Point-to-Point Communications

1) INMARSAT

Here we extend the discussion on INMARSAT by considering their specific systems and developments for

mobile satellite communications.

INMARSAT started operations in 1979, leasing its satellite capacity from COMSAT and from ESA

MARECS Satellites, and serving approximately 900 ships in the early 80’s. In 1991 the second generation

of satellites, INMARSAT-2, was built by an international group headed by British Aerospace, and four

satellites were launched between 1991 and 1992: two over the Atlantic Ocean (West and East), one over

the Pacific Ocean, and one over the Indian Ocean. The third generation comprising five satellites, backed

up by the earlier four ones, has been built by Lockheed Martin Astro Space and European Matra Marconi

Space, and launched between 1995 and 1997.

INMARSAT, which started trading in 1982, was converted into a private organization in 1999, splitting the

commercial company from the regulatory body. The fourth generation has been built by an international

team headed by EADS Astrium, and put into orbit from 2005 to 2008, comprising three satellites.

The first and the second INMARSAT satellite generations operated a single beam in L-band, and their

orbital position was fairly close (considering the spatial distribution of the traffic) to the original idea of Sir

Arthur C. Clarke, as shown in Figure 7.

 19

Figure 7: Coverage Pattern of INMARSAT Satellites [22]

.
The third generation started providing spot-beams, to increase the EIRP in order to diminish the terminal

size. Fourth generation satellites today provide 19 wide beams and more than 200 spot beams which can be

reconfigured and focused almost everywhere in their area of coverage.

The INMARSAT-A mobile satellite service started in 1975 and has been discontinued at the end of 2007. It

provided two-way voice and data communications anywhere in the world, with the exception of the poles.

It was based upon analogue FM technology and supported data rates from 9,600 bit/s up to 64,000 bit/s,

depending upon modulation and coding formats in the end-to-end connection. INMARSAT-E was a non-

commercial service for global maritime distress and alerting. Distress alerts transmitted from INMARSAT-

E Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacons (EPIRBs) were relayed through INMARSAT satellites to

dedicated receiving equipments located at strategic points in Germany, USA, Australia, and UK [22][23].

The present day network is based on the Internet Protocol (IP) for maritime, aeronautical and land mobile

services, and is identified as Broadband Global Area Network (BGAN). It started operating for the land-

mobile case, to ease terminal pointing, and later enabled for maritime and aeronautical communications,

exploiting advanced antenna pointing features and Doppler shift compensation techniques. The fifth
 20

generation of satellite is under study, as well as the shift from L-band to S-band in order to deliver mobile

satellite services.

Figure 8: INMARSAT 4 (Courtesy of Astrium)

2) Iridium

The Iridium system was conceived in 1987 as the first global mobile satellite system based on Low Earth

Orbits (LEOs) [24]-[26]. This system introduced a number of significant technical innovations and will

remain a milestone in the history of satellite communications. The original configuration foresaw 77

satellites, and was therefore named after the Iridium atom (having 77 orbiting electrons); the system was

later re-designed employing only 66 satellites but the name remained. Iridium satellites orbit at 780 km

above the Earth in six planes in near circular orbit, with 11 satellites in each plane (plus one in-orbit spare

per plane)as shown in Figure 9.

 21

Figure 9: Iridium satellites and their orbits[24]

. The planes are inclined at 86.4 degrees, which classify as polar orbits. All planes rotate effectively in the

same direction, but at the seam where plane 1 and 6 meet, the satellites appear to rotate in opposite

directions. Therefore five planes couples are co-rotating, and one is counter-rotating. Co-rotating planes are

spaced 31.6 degrees apart, while the counter rotating ones are 22 degrees apart. The speed of satellites is

around 27000 km/h, with an orbital period slightly above 100 minutes. Each satellite covers a circular area

with a diameter of about 4400 km. The minimum practical elevation angle is 8.2 degrees. From any point

on Earth, a specific satellite is in view for about 9 minutes, and a spot beam for only 1 minute. This

introduced the need for a new procedure: inter-satellite handover along with inter-beam and inter-gateway

handover.
 22

The satellites also perform on-board switching with up to four Inter-Satellite Links (ISLs) for routing of

signaling and user data. ISLs are used between satellites in the same plane (intra-plane) and between

satellites in adjacent planes (inter-plane). The intra-plane ISLs are permanently maintained (links to the

satellite in front and behind), while the inter-plane ISLs are dynamically established and released as the

satellite orbits. The satellites in the co-rotating planes have four ISLs each, while the satellites in the

counter-rotating planes have three ISLs each (two intra-plane). Due to the variation in horizontal azimuth

between satellites, it is necessary to have steerable antennas for the inter-orbital ISLs. The ISLs operate at

25 Mbit/s in Ka-band. Each satellite has a routing table showing how to reach the specific satellite that can

deliver the call to a user. In the event that a link between satellites fails, new routing tables must be

delivered to all the satellites in the vicinity of the failed link. Each satellite has three phased array antennas

with 16 spot beams each, giving a total of 48 spot beams. Service is provided (or denied) based on country-

by-country service agreements.

Starting with the first launch (5 May 1997), the entire constellation was deployed in around 12 months on

launch vehicles from three continents: the US Delta II (five satellites per launch), the Russian Proton (seven

satellites per launch), and the Chinese Long March (two satellites per launch). With a life-time of 5-8 years,

about a dozen satellites have to be replaced each year.

Iridium started with a dozen gateways (GWs) for interconnection with the terrestrial network, run by

different operating companies, at the time of writing this number has been more than halved. Each

company distributes the Iridium services through telecom operators, with regional agreements. The Iridium

constellation, thanks to ISLs, does not require that a GW is present in the footprint of each satellite, as

signals can be routed via one or more satellites to reach a GW. This solution creates a network in the sky,

giving Iridium both a strategic advantage and a regulatory hurdle.

Iridium uses FDMA/TDMA/TDD (Frequency Division Multiple Access/Time Division Multiple

Access/Time Division Duplexing) with a TDMA frame of 90 ms, containing four full-duplex channels at a

data rate of 50 kbit/s. Voice channels operate at 2.4 or 4.8 kbit/s. Data are transmitted at 2.4 kbit/s. Forward
 23

error coding (FEC) rate is 3/4 and the modulation is QPSK (Quaternary Phase Shift Keying). The mobile

user link uses L-band operating in the range 1616 MHz to 1626.5 MHz. The 10.5 MHz bandwidth is

divided up into 240 channels of 41.67 kHz each, plus a total of 500 kHz for guard bands. The frequency

reuse factor is 12, i.e. there are 12 spot beams in each cluster.

The evolution of the systems is Iridium NEXT. It is supposed to be launched in 2015, providing flexible

allocation of bandwidth and private network gateways, on an IP-based network. This approach will

enhance the system, enabling machine-to-machine global communications and higher data rates.

3) Globalstar

Globalstar is a satellite-based cellular telephone system whose coverage area is between 70° North and

South latitudes. It is based on Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) transmission and avoids outages

caused by blockage of signals by using diversity from at least two satellites in view. Globalstar provides

voice services as well as data transmission. This project started in 1991 as a joint venture of Loral

Corporation and Qualcomm, receiving a spectral slot from FCC in 1995. Next, 48 satellites and 4 spares

were launched between 1998 and 2000. The Globalstar system consists of a Walker 48-8-1 constellation

[27]; that is, 48 low-orbiting (1414 km altitude) satellites in eight orbits, at 52° inclination over the equator,

with six satellites in each orbital plane, as depicted in Figure 10.

Figure 10: Globalstar Constellation [27] Figure 11: 1st generation GLOBALSTAR (SSL)
 24

They link to users in the 1.6 GHz and 2.5 GHz bands, and communicate with the large GW ground

antennas in the 5 and 7 GHz bands. The Globalstar air interface specifies a CDMA waveform that uses a

combination of frequency division, pseudorandom code division and orthogonal signal multiple access

techniques. Frequency division is employed by dividing the available spectrum into 1.23 MHz bandwidth

channels. CDMA provides universal frequency reuse. Each ground station has the capacity to connect up to

1000 users to the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN). Ground stations are distributed around the

world in order to connect users with their local PSTN.

The satellite is three-axis stabilized with the Earth facing panel always parallel to the orbit tangent. A

Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver is used to accurately determine the orbit parameters and also to

supply accurate time and frequency to the satellite systems. Solar panels and a large nickel-hydrogen

battery provide power for all phases of the mission. Battery recharging takes place over the oceans, where

traffic is normally low.

In Globalstar operation, the user terminal (UT) transmits an average EIRP of about -10 dBW (maximum -4

dBW) and contains a three-channel rake receiver, so that it can receive signals from more than one satellite

simultaneously. The basic UT is a handheld unit that looks like a cellular phone, albeit with a longer and

thicker antenna. A Globalstar terminal is also able to operate with the terrestrial cellular network, if present.

Car terminals are supplied with a larger antenna gain and a power amplifier, to adapt the handheld unit for

mobile use. Globalstar may also employ fixed user terminals, which are typically solar-powered phone

booths in remote villages.

4) Common features in mobile satellite services

Iridium and Globalstar have common features in the fact that they both were planned and announced in a

moment in which terrestrial personal communications were extremely appealing, even if voice-only and

limited to regional coverage, thus the idea of a world-wide coverage seemed more than promising. Iridium

and Globalstar systems were then launched, but from the very beginning they had to cope with a limited
 25

number of users with respect to their plans. This fact can be explained considering the initial high pricing

rates, the bulky terminals of the first generation, and more importantly the consideration that a world-wide

coverage does not provide a real benefit in the most populated zones, since there is already a terrestrial

network in operation, with lower cost and lower latency. Furthermore, Iridium and Globalstar had to

differentiate their market from INMARSAT, which was already operating.

The above systems demonstrated LEO constellations control and operation to a large number of satellites

generated cells together with handovers. In the case of Iridium, also the first commercial use of on board

processing and inter satellite links.

Both Iridium and Globalstar filed for bankruptcy, and both, after new investments, are operating again,

with a new generation of user terminals and plans for new satellites and services. It is worthwhile noting

that INMARSAT and Iridium have plans for a fully IP-based network, which will render mobile satellite

services more appealing to the general public.

B. Mobile Broadcasting

1) WorldSpace

WorldSpace has been the first satellite Digital Radio Broadcasting system providing portable reception.

The WorldSpace system offered a worldwide coverage using geostationary satellites in L-band. The service

targets are mainly underserved radio markets, where low cost radio and radio portability are key.

The WorldSpace system is composed of 2 medium size geostationary satellites: AfriStar, launched in late

1998, covering Africa and Middle East, and AsiaStar, launched in early 2000, covering Asia. A third

satellite has never been launched due to financial problems.

In addition to the space segment, the system provides a comprehensive ground infrastructure deployed over

five continents, comprising various control centers (satellite, mission and broadcast) and service providers.

The uplink frequency band is the 7025-7075 MHz frequency band, and the downlink frequency band is the

1467-1492 MHz frequency band, worldwide (except some areas, such as US, Japan) allocated to satellite

sound broadcasting. Each satellite has the capacity to transmit a capacity of 50-200 programs per beam.
 26

The WorldSpace system uses TDM (Time Division Multiplexing) QPSK transmission in the downlink,

including concatenated FEC (Convolutional and Reed Solomon codes). Each downlink beam offers a link

margin which helps combat signal losses due to blockage, providing good reception quality. Radio

receivers in disadvantaged locations can be connected to high gain antennas, or to antennas located in an

unobstructed position. For example, reception in large buildings may need a common roof antenna for the

entire building or an individual reception antenna near a window. To improve the availability in dense

urban areas suffering blockages, WorldSpace has extended its system to a hybrid satellite/terrestrial system,

in which a complementary terrestrial component retransmits the satellite TDM signal using multi-carrier

modulation.

The signal audio sources are digitally coded using the ISO/Audio MPEG 2 layer III standard, worldwide

known as mp3. The digitally coded source bit rates range from 16 kbit/s for mono near AM quality to 64

kbit/s for stereo FM quality.

In July 2008 the company changed name to 1WorldSpace and it filed for bankruptcy protection on October

17, 2008, mainly due to difficulty in market start-up.

2) Sirius Satellite Radio and XM Radio

Sirius Satellite Radio and XM Satellite Radio are the two most successful digital audio mobile satellite

systems. They received their FCC operating licence in 1997, and started operations independently,

implementing different architectural choices [28]. In July 2008 they have formed Sirius XM Radio. At the

time of writing, the company serves over 19 million subscribers in Continental United States and Canada,

having agreements with major automotive partners to install Sirius XM receivers in a wide range of car

models. Notwithstanding the joint enterprise, the two transmission systems are still different, and will be

examined separately.

Sirius satellites receive in X-band (7060-7072.5 MHz) and transmit in S-band (2320-2332.5 MHz). To

guarantee coverage with good visibility (high elevation angle), Sirius employs three satellites in elliptical

orbits at an inclination of 63.4°, with two satellites in visibility at any moment, as depicted in Figure 12.
 27

Figure 12: Sirus Satellites' HEO orbit [28]

Terrestrial repeaters are present in major urban areas to allow continuous reception also in the presence of

obstacles that can effectively block the space-based signal. The 12.5 MHz S-band spectrum assigned to

Sirius Radio is segmented into three sub-bands. The upper and lower sub-bands, each with a bandwidth of

4.2 MHz, are assigned to the two satellites in view that broadcast the same material, enforcing frequency

diversity, and time shifted by 4 seconds to introduce time diversity. The middle sub-band, 4.1 MHz wide, is

used by terrestrial repeaters which receive the signal from a separate VSAT (Very Small Aperture

Terminal) satellite.

The waveform is single-carrier, QPSK modulated and the code is provided by a concatenation of Reed-

Solomon and Convolutional codes. Terrestrial repeaters employ Coded OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency

Division Multiplexing) and differential QPSK with 1000 active carriers.

The Sirius system conveys more than 130 digital audio channels, and in 2005 Sirius added an enhanced but

backward compatible overlay modulation, increasing the throughput of the system up to 5.4 Mbit/s. The
 28

satellite TDM signals are independently FEC coded with a different interleaving pattern, in order to ease

signal combining at the receiver side. In mid-2009 Sirius added a GEO satellite. This satellite operates

continuously, while the HEO (Highly Elliptical Orbit) ones operate only on the 8-hour upper loop of their

orbit.

Although providing essentially the same quality of service (QoS) and similar capacity, XM Satellite Radio

performed different architectural choices regarding satellite orbits and diversity type. To maximize signal

availability to mobile receivers everywhere within the Continental United States, the system employs two

high-powered geostationary satellites, located at longitude 85W and 115W, and a network of urban

repeaters for re-broadcasting.

The XM Satellite Radio system uses the 2332.5-2345 MHz frequency band. The TDMs signals are

spectrally narrower and organized in “ensembles”, where each ensemble (A or B) carries half of the total

content and each satellite transmits one multiplex of each ensemble. To cope with terrestrial transmission

environment, broadcasting from repeaters uses COFDM modulation. Repeaters are fed by the signal

broadcast by satellites in S-band. The system provides seamless reception between the satellite and the

repeater components.
 29

VII. VSAT AND BROADBAND SATELLITE SYSTEMS

VSAT stands for a small satellite terminal that can be used for one-way and/or interactive communications.

the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) define, in brief, a VSAT as a one or two-way

terminal used in a star, mesh or point to point network. In this case the antenna size is restricted to being

less than or equal to 1.8 m at Ka band, 3.8 m at Ku band and 7.8 m at C band.

VSATs were first employed for data distribution to a large number of locations. They provided a means to

avoid the highly regulated (monopoly based) PTT (Postal Telephone and Telegraph) communications

infrastructure as well as the associated high charges for such networks (also known as ‘by-pass’). Most

early use was in private networks.

VSAT networks first appeared in the early 1980’s when Equatorial Communications, a start-up company

launched by Ed Parker and Dean Mack in a warehouse near Palo Alto, initiated the first use of really small

dish antennas for receive-only applications [29]. Data distributors like “wire services” were quick to jump

to using the technology to economically distribute information to thousands of receive only VSAT’s. Two

way services soon followed that provided an interactive platform [30]-[34].

A. VSAT Network Topologies

Star – employs a large antenna hub and enables small VSAT with low power VSAT transmitter. Typical of

networks in the 1980s and 1990s needing dual satellite hops to communicate from one VSAT to another

on the network.

Mesh – allowing direct terminal to terminal communications, also employs a hub but needs greater power

and sensitivity in the satellite. Mesh networks have become of age over the last few years as the

technology on the satellite has been evolved to accommodate them.

Mesh Overlay – employs a hub for the signaling and management but mesh for traffic being carried from

one VSAT to another on the network.

 30

VSAT networks are sometimes extended using wireless distribution such as Wi-Fi or WiMAX.

Different VSAT platforms use various technologies in order to access the satellite radio space segment and

share it among multiple subscribers. These multiple access schemes include TDMA, SCPC-DAMA (Single

Channel per Carrier / Demand Assigned Multiple Access), CDMA, Multi-Frequency TDMA (MF-TDMA).

The MF-TDMA option is widely adopted in broadband satellite access networks.

B. Standards

In the early years of VSATs the lack of compliance to any specific standard and the shortage of agreed

standards were significant impediments to the development of a thriving VSAT market. For example one

service provider, in the early 1990s, identified that there were some 27 vendors offering VSAT products

with around 20 different interfaces, service quality levels and network management approaches with loose

association with protocols such as X25. On the other hand, Standardization Bodies were not very interested

in spending resources to develop standards if the market was not mature and significant. In the late 1990s

the market had matured sufficiently for open standards to be developed (the need for proprietary systems to

protect high investment values had diminished).

In 1995 SES Astra began working with various industry bodies such as ETSI, DAVIC (Digital Audio-

Visual Council), DVB and others, to establish a standards-based return channel design for the DVB system

(DVB-RCS). DVB-RCS was adopted as a standard by ETSI during mid-2000 [35] [36], joining a family of

DVB standards which includes return channels for wireless, cable and other media. DVB-RCS offered high

bandwidth on the forward and return links -with a 45 Mbit/s outbound channel and an inbound channel of 2

Mbit/s working with a multiple-frequency TDMA access scheme. It is believed that the DVB-RCS was the

first open standard for satellite based Internet access.

IPoS (Internet Protocol over Satellite) is a newer satellite Internet protocol which was developed by Hughes

Network Systems, the developers of Direcway. The ETSI has issued a technical standard on IPoS [37].

S-DOCSIS is a modification of the DOCSIS cable-modem protocol for transmission over satellite. To work

well over satellite links, the DOCSIS protocol was modified to support additional modulation algorithms,
 31

such as QPSK. In addition, variable modulation protocols allow support for a wide range of satellite

transmission attenuation conditions. S-DOCSIS has been deployed in countries such as the United States,

Canada, Saudi Arabia, France, Mexico, Colombia, and Malaysia.

C. Adoption of TCP/IP

One of the major obstacles in inserting a satellite VSAT subnetwork into the complete Internet arena is

related to the use of the TCP/IP protocol (Transmission Control Protocol and IP) over GEO links,

characterized by large round trip delay. In fact, despite significant optimizations and enhancements

proposed over the many years, TCP/IP operation has not changed significantly since RFC 793, published in

1981. Applying standard TCP/IP to Satellite Internet access circuits leads to the under-utilization of the link

and degraded performance. There are a number of solutions available in order to overcome TCP/IP

performance degradation, such as TCP accelerators, Performance Enhancing Proxies (PEP), Delay Tolerant

Networks (DTN) [38].

It is worthy of note that the adoption on an IP centric design was a quantum step in the evolution and

deployment of VSAT networks. Having established IP as the primary element of the system architecture,

all of the vendors have gone on to build router capabilities into their systems as an inherent part of their

feature set.

D. Mobile use of VSATs and standards

Considerable efforts have recently been placed in the DVB standards activities to adapt the DVB-RCS

standard to accommodate communications with a terminal on the move [39]. According to market surveys

and current implementation plans there is a significant role that VSATs can play in communications to

ships (cruise liners), aircraft, trains and large vehicles.

 32

E. Market Aspects

The USA led the way in competition policies for the telecommunications industry during the late 1970s and

early 1980s. Restrictive legislation was reduced and regulation minimized with market forces encouraged.

This resulted in an expansion of telecommunication service companies and associated growth of

entrepreneurial developments and products. VSAT systems owe a great deal to these developments as a

catalyst to their market places. The UK followed by Western Europe lagged but were not far behind.

Elsewhere in the world, politics have greatly influenced the shape of VSAT services in many countries.

Many governments maintained their monopoly on international services, giving freedom over domestic

exploitation. 1994 saw Europe in the interim stages of liberalization and this was only really completed by

2000.

During the early 1990s, Latin America was probably exhibiting the fastest rates of deregulation. Services

were relatively free in Chile, Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela and Mexico.

At December 2008, the total number of VSAT terminals ordered stood at over 2.2 million. Annual VSAT

service revenues were $5.46 billion, with TDMA & DAMA hardware revenues at $964 million [40]. Figure

14 indicates the annual sales of VSAT terminals by user type over the period 1985 to 2008 as kindly

provided by Comsys.

Figure 13: A typical VSAT terminal as used for the UK Lottery point of presence.
 33

900,000

800,000

Consumer Internet
700,000 SME Broadband
enterprise

600,000

500,000

400,000

300,000

200,000

100,000

0
1985

1986

1987

1988

1989

1990

1991

1992

1993

1994

1995

1996

1997

1998

1999

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008
Figure 14: Annual sales of VSAT terminals by type (courtesy of Comsys [40] with permission)

F. Broadband Satellites Networks

At present, dedicated broadband satellite systems are emerging for use in the US, Europe and Asia such as

Wildblue, Spaceway, the Eutelsat KaSAT and Ipstar. These satellites systems are providing a more

economical means of supporting VSAT services compared to older satellite systems primarily because:

1) They are optimized for VSAT operation (bespoke satellites) and not general purpose satellites

which result in non-optimum configuration and costs for VSAT services.

2) They employ advanced multiple spot beam antennas that allow a better match to the VSAT power

requirements for both the satellite and the ground terminal.

3) Some use on-board processing that provides enhanced capabilities compared to older designs.
 34

4) They have a much higher total satellite throughput compared to other satellites which results in a

larger customer base from which to recover revenue.

5) They predominantly use Ka-Band where there is more bandwidth available and smaller terminals

are possible.

As a final note, the regulatory and political environments have been significant barriers to the rapid growth

of VSAT systems. The technology evolution on the ground as well as in space has enabled significant

improvements in the capability and sustainability of VSAT networks. Due to the transition from proprietary

to open standards, terminals prices have been coming down and the trend is expected to continue.

VSAT networks have played an important role in telecommunications and the opportunities to continue this

exist into the distant future. For more background the reader is referred to [41] to [44].

VIII. CONCLUSIONS & FUTURE OF SATELLITE COMMUNICATIONS

In this paper we attempted to trace the history of service-oriented satellite communications, starting from

the early visions to the international organizations for satellite communications and systems. We discussed

then the area of broadcasting to fixed and mobile terminals, the communications between mobile terminals,

and the usage of satellite for data communications. This analysis included the state-of-the-art of this field,

thus a brief discussion about the future of satellite communications is in order here, after our description of

historical developments.

Satellite and terrestrial operators have thus far remained separate, engendering a competitive environment.

However, the future is very much more an integrated one, where they will benefit from collaboration and

this is foreseen as a key element in business reorganization for the future. Spectrum remains the lifeblood

of satellite communications and needs to be used more efficiently, which means sharing between systems.

Technology is now becoming available to allow this via interference mitigation and cognitive radio. Digital

signal processing on board satellite is being adopted, as the power generated by satellites increases and the

power utilization of the circuitry reduces. This will enable improved connectivity between large numbers of
 35

beams that are needed to attain the frequency reuse to increase the satellite capacity and thus reduce the

cost per bit in delivery to the customers. On board processing has been around for twenty years but has not

so far been deployed commercially (except in Iridium)—has its time come? There are limits involved in

bigger and bigger GEO’s and the issue of resilience in focusing very large capacity via one satellite could

herald the use of clusters of smaller GEO’s which could be rolled out to match the user demands and in

expanding geographical areas. What of constellations? The technology has been proven and second

generation mobile systems are being constructed in 2010. For Global systems they undoubtedly have a

future. Non-GEO’s are also appearing (e.g., the O3B fleet [45]) for special applications such as mobile

backhaul in equatorial regions. Other innovations involving Non-GEO’s and possibly hybrid orbits are

likely to appear.

Satellites clearly have a role in establishing internet services to a larger proportion of the World’s

population (currently only around 50% but with targets to take to 90% by 2020). Those without internet are

largely in the developing world and O3B addresses aspects of this market with its equatorial constellation

of Ka band satellites. However, even in the developed world with predictions for user demands up to

30Mb/s by 2020 and maybe 100Mb/s by 2030 satellites will have a delivery role in areas that are

uneconomic to provide via terrestrial infrastructure. The ‘Future Internet’ will incorporate such higher rates

along with services to trillions of sensor devices (The ‘Internet of Things’ (IoT)). New standards and

protocols are being developed to meet these challenges which must be inclusive of the satellite delivery

environment [46], [47].

As we move up in the spectrum to satisfy the increased user demands, the effects of precipitation become a

limiting factor and again technology such as Adaptive Modulation and Coding (ACM) is already being

used to combat rain fading. Satellite systems at Ka band are being planned using data collected from

propagation campaigns [48][49]. However ACM needs simultaneous wide area propagation statistics of

which there is little to date [50]. Demands on increased traffic driven by higher internet rates and video are

forcing the use of even higher bands e.g. Q/V and their characterization [51] or even W band [52]. The use
 36

of smart gateway schemes which switch traffic around a network of gateways may also prove necessary to

achieve availabilities in the Ka/Q/V bands [53] and possibly the future use of optical satellite links and

optical technology on board satellites [54][55]. For all systems, the satellite multi beam antenna is a crucial

item and especially for mobile systems at L/S/C bands where very large deployable antennas are needed

(currently circa 20m diameter). A possible future technology could be a virtual antenna composed of very

large numbers of active pico-sats giving hundreds of meter dimensions. Not stopping there, we could also

see fragmented satellites with separate components linked in space. For example separate power modules

with ultra large solar arrays.

It is clear that satellite will have a continuing market for mobiles over sea, in the air and over inhospitable

terrain. Diversity in telecommunications will also see a role in fixed and in access networks. Broadcasting,

which is currently the big revenue earner, is perhaps less certain as more programme material is delivered

over the Internet. However demands are for multiview 3D and eventually immersive presence for virtual

meetings which will herald ultra high bit rates. The major change in the satellite communications market in

the next decade could well be how systems evolve to meet this challenge.
 37

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