Quick position determination using 1 or 2 LEO satellites

We describe an approach for a medium accuracy position determination of a user terminal (UT) on the Earth surface, using one or two low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites. The positioning approach is intended to meet the requirements of a worldwide personal communications system using LEO satellites. The basic two requirements are: (1) immediate positioning, and (2) horizontal position accuracy of the order of 10 km. Those requirements stem from the need of the system to know the user's approximate location before it connects his call. The approach makes use of the two-way communication with the UT, which can receive, transmit, and make its own measurements. Delay and Doppler measurements are used in order to enable instantaneous positioning with one satellite, and in order to achieve unambiguous positioning with two satellites. A simplified Globalstar satellite constellation and the expected Globalstar delay and frequency measurement accuracy are used to demonstrate the concept and to evaluate its performances     

Japan's CS (Sakura) Communications Satellite Experiments

The Japanese Communications Satellite (CS), called Sakura, is a "Medium Capacity Communications Satellite for Experimental Purposes" and is the first experimental communications satellite in which 30/20 GHz bands were adopted and were developed for practical domestic use. Large scale field trials have been carried out for more than three years in order to evaluate 30/20 GHz (Ka-band) and 6/4 GHz (C-band) domestic satellite communications system technologies under actual operational conditions by using the CS Sakura launched in December 1977. Through the various experiments on Kand C-band large fixed and small transportable Earth station systems, satellite control experiments, and Ka-band propagation measurements, it has been verified that the medium capacity satellite communications system meets the design objectives.     

Communications satellite technology and services for the 90's

The history of satellite communications is reviewed, and its future is addressed from the viewpoint of both commercial and military users. Technological advances and new services are discussed. User's requirements are assessed     

GPS modeling for designing aerospace vehicle navigation systems

The complexity of the design of a Global Positioning System (GPS) user segment, as well as the performance demanded of the components, depends on user requirements such as total navigation accuracy. Other factors, for instance the expected satellite/vehicle geometry or the accuracy of an accompanying inertial navigation system can also affect the user segment design. Models of GPS measurements are used to predict user segment performance at various levels. Design curves are developed which illustrate the relationship between user requirements, the user segment design, and component performance     

Orbital and Attitude Prediction Accuracy Requirements for Satellites Engaged in Remote Sensing and Scientific Missions

The criteria for selecting the orbital and attitude prediction accuracy requirements for communications satellites have been investigated in a previous paper by the author. The present paper extends the analysis to the satellites engaged in remote sensing and scientific missions. A unified approach has been developed to examine the problem of the prediction accuracy requirements for the two missions.     

Pointing and Stability Requirements for Earth Orbital Experiments

Experiments for manned and unmanned space facilities of the next decade will impose stringent requirements for accurately pointing and/or maintaining stability of the space platforms over extended periods. Potential experiment programs identified to date in various NASA-and contractor-sponsored studies have been reviewed in order to define critical values and ranges for the following pointing/stability parameters: 1) pointing accuracy, 2) line-of-sight stability, 3) angular rate, and/or 4) acceleration level. The most stringent requirements were found to be in the research categories of: stellar and solar astronomy, earth observations, space physics, communications and navigation, and space biology.     

Overview of Commercial Satellite Communications

The period from Arthur Clarke's 1945 prediction of geosynchronous satellite communications covering the entire planet until satellites were stationed over the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans was less than 25 years. In the following 15 year period, satellite communications has affected all of us. Most international calls are carried by satellite. Much of the television that we watch has been relayed, processed, or distributed by satellite. In fact, many of us who live in cabled cities can choose among 50 channels or more for viewing on a particular night, largely brought to us by satellite. Some morning papers, radio programs, and basic weather data appear coast to coast rapidly because of the satellite. Even while we sleep, computers in an increasing number of business offices are talking to each other by satellite. Virtually the whole world, from the busiest urban center to the most remote island, can be interconnected by satellite communications networks capable of providing economical and reliable transmission of communications signals, including voice, data, electronic mail, and video. The satellite's advantages of distance insensitivity, point-to-multipoint capability, and improved quality over long distances are unique. These facts have led Clarke to speculate on the future impact of satellite communications in The View from Serendip (1977): I submit . . . that the eventual impact of the communications satellite upon the whole human race will be at least as great as that of the telephone upon the so-called developed societies.     

The Tactical Communications Satellite

Early in 1969 the U. S. Air Force placed into synchronous orbit the largest communications satellite built to date. This vehicle, the tactical communications satellite (TACSAT), together with a variety of ground terminals, is designed to test experimentally and develop tactical communications concepts for all military services. This paper describes the spacecraft design focusing on the communications repeater. Measured performance characteristics affecting communications utilization of the spacecraft are presented.     

卫星测试转台方位轴传动链的优化设计

为了降低卫星测试转台研发成本同时满足传动的高定位精度要求,设计了基于双齿轮消隙机构和偏心套机构的转台方位轴末端传动机构改进方案。通过实物验证,实现了2T级卫星测试转台的定位精度的要求,相比原传动链减少了50%的制造周期和65%的制造成本。     

Iridium(R) aeronautical satellite communications

The ever-increasing demand to stay in touch, to be able to communicate anywhere and anytime, has created a market for low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite communications services such as the Iridium system. The Iridium satellite communications network is being developed to support the needs of the passenger, the cabin crew and the flight crew for: aeronautical public correspondence (APC); aeronautical administrative communications (AAC); aeronautical operational control (AOC); and air traffic services (ATS)     

导航通信融合定义、方式与典型系统

随着人们对定位安全和定位准确性要求的提升,仅仅依赖卫星导航系统已经不能满足用户在各种复杂环境下的个性化定位需求,在此背景下,通信导航一体化技术应运而生。移动通信网络具有覆盖广、用户数量大和安全保密性好等优点,将通信系统作为卫星导航系统的有效补充,可以有效提升导航系统的性能。导航通信融合技术已经成为导航领域未来发展的重要技术热点,但目前缺乏清晰的导通融合架构和导通融合方式。从导通融合的技术层面进行划分,提出了波形融合、信息融合、硬件融合三种导通融合方式,分析了通信系统的辅助信息对导航系统精度和抗干扰能力的影响,以及两种典型的导通融合系统的优缺点,并对其未来的发展进行了展望,补充了导航通信融合技术的基础理论,对导通融合技术的发展具有重大意义。     

Global communication using a constellation of low Earth meridianorbits

The concept of meridian orbits is briefly reviewed. It is shown that, if a satellite in the meridian orbit makes an odd number (>1) of revolutions per day, then the satellite passes over the same set of meridians twice a day. Satellites in such orbits pass over the same portion of the sky twice a day and every day. This enables a user to adopt a programmed mode of tracking, thereby avoiding a computational facility for orbit prediction, look angle generation, and auto tracking. A constellation of 38 or more satellites placed in a 1200-km altitude circular orbit is favorable for global communications due to various factors. It is shown that appropriate phasing in right ascension of the ascending node and mean anomaly results in a constellation wherein each satellite appears over the user's horizon one satellite after another. Visibility and coverage plots are provided to verify the continuous coverage     

The development of aeronautical mobile satellite services over thepast thirty years

This paper presents an overview of the development of aeronautical mobile satellite services (AMSS) over the past 30 years. The inherent shortcomings of present air-ground HF communications have hindered the development of civil aviation, but according to the Future Air Navigation Systems (FANS) concept aeronautical satellite communication-including Automatic Dependent Surveillance (ADS)-will be the key to eliminating the shortcomings of HF communication systems. Satellite-based communication and surveillance will significantly improve air traffic control (ATC) over the oceanic and remote terrestrial airspace, and it will benefit civil aviation authorities, airlines as well as passengers. This paper discusses the availability of system elements, and world wide trials, demonstrations and preoperational use of aeronautical satellite communications over past years are described. Future satellite systems possible for aeronautical communications are also discussed     

导航通信融合定义、方式与典型系统

随着人们对定位安全和定位准确性要求的提升，仅仅依赖卫星导航系统已经不能满足用户在各种复杂环境下的个性化定位需求，在此背景下，通信导航一体化技术应运而生。移动通信网络具有覆盖广、用户数量大和安全保密性好等优点，将通信系统作为卫星导航系统的有效补充，可以有效提升导航系统的性能。导航通信融合技术已经成为导航领域未来发展的重要技术热点，但目前缺乏清晰的导通融合架构和导通融合方式。从导通融合的技术层面进行划分，提出了波形融合、信息融合、硬件融合三种导通融合方式，分析了通信系统的辅助信息对导航系统精度和抗干扰能力的影响，以及两种典型的导通融合系统的优缺点，并对其未来的发展进行了展望，补充了导航通信融合技术的基础理论，对导通融合技术的发展具有重大意义。     

High gain airborne antenna for satellite communications

The performance of an airborne phased-array antenna, which was developed and evaluated onboard a commercial aircraft using the Engineering Test Satellite V (ETS-V), is reported. The system requirements and the antenna configuration that satisfies them are described. The radiation pattern, gain and axial ratio, noise temperature and ratio of gain to noise temperature, and environmental characteristics are presented. The results obtained by the flight experiments demonstrate that the performance of the antenna is the same as that on the ground, so that the antenna is suitable for installation in an aircraft for satellite communications     

Advanced communications satellite technology

Technology drivers for commercial communications satellites are examined based on the efficient use of spacecraft mass which is to be accomplished by increasing the efficiency of the microwave power amplifiers and antenna feed systems used for communications satellites, such as the INTELSAT series. The history of the INTELSAT series of satellites, the late 1980s market and available technology, and future directions of development are considered. Emphasis is on multibeam solid-state antennas, microwave switch matrices, solid-state power amplifiers, and the use of several filter modes in one physical cavity. By using quasimonolithic solid state techniques in a class B amplification mode they have achieved 40-60% efficiencies, compared with 20% for the conventional travelling wavetube amplifiers. It is concluded that technology directed towards improving the economics of satellite communications will continue to be a major driver of future communications satellite payloads. Through their use and their extension, the authors foresee more than doubling the telephone channels per satellite from the current 80000 to perhaps 200000 by the turn of the century     

ATS-6 Significance

The Applications Technology Satellite (ATS-6), the most powerful, most sophisticated, most versatile communications satellite flown to date, is the last of NASA's experimental satellites intended to demonstrate major advances in communications and spacecraft technology. It is a multipurpose, multidisciplinary spacecraft whose principal objectives were to demonstrate a large, unfurlable antenna structure and precise pointing and attitude control in the synchronous orbit The spacecraft carries 27 different experiments, 3 of which demonstrate users' applications of satellite communications. Significant advances in antenna technology, precise attitude control, materials technology, spacecraft structures, and thermal control have been successfully demonstrated. The most significant accomplishments of the ATS-6 mission are the demonstration of the practicality of satellite broadcasting to small, simple, inexpensive ground stations and the uses of this potential service in the solution of social problems involving education and health care. The success of these initial demonstrations has led ATS-6 experimenters and potential users to incorporate a Public Service Satellite Consortium dedicated to the provision of satellite broadcasting services for educational and health-care applications.     

Performance evaluation of digital beamforming strategies for satellite communications

Smart antennas are becoming one of the promising technologies to meet the rapidly increasing demands for more capacity of satellite communication systems. A main component in a smart antenna system is beamforming. Because of the limitations of analog beamforming, digital beamforming will be employed in future satellite communication systems. We evaluate the performance of various digital beamforming strategies proposed in the literature for satellite communications: 1) single fixed beam/single user, 2) single fixed beam/multiple users, 3) single adaptive beam/single user, and 4) single Chebyshev dynamic beam/multiple users. Multiple criteria including coverage, system capacity, signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR), and computation complexity are used to evaluate these satellite communication beamforming strategies. In particular, a Ka-band satellite communication system is used to address the various issues of these beamforming strategies. For the adaptive beamforming approach, subarray structure is used to obtain the weights of a large 2D antenna array, and a globally convergent recurrent neural network (RNN) is proposed to realize the adaptive beamforming algorithm in parallel. The new subarray-based neural beamforming algorithm can reduce the computation complexity greatly, and is more effective than the conventional least mean square (LMS) beamforming approach. It is shown that the single adaptive beam/single user approach has the highest system capacity.     

双线程滑动窗口多系统GNSS超快精密定轨实现及评估

全球导航卫星系统（GNSS）超快精密定轨为GNSS实时应用提供了高精度空间基准。基于天地协同定位、导航与授时（PNT）网络服务中心实现了四系统GNSS卫星超快精密定轨,并对定轨结果进行精度评价。介绍了天地协同PNT网络的概念内涵以及网络服务中心部署的超快精密定轨软件架构和详细功能,并针对实时应用需求提出了一种双线程滑动窗口超快精密定轨策略。最后利用重叠弧段比较、与外部轨道产品比较以及卫星激光测距（SLR）检核3种方式对定轨结果进行了精度评价。结果表明,与武汉大学分析中心的最终事后精密轨道产品相比,四系统GNSS MEO卫星预报6 h弧段的径向均方根（RMS）误差整体在2~5 cm水平,BDS2 IGSO卫星最小一维RMS误差在10~15 cm水平;GPS和Galileo卫星的SLR检核残差均值在1~3 cm水平,标准差在3~6 cm水平,能够满足后续厘米级实时应用对空间基准的精度需求。     

Orbital Inclination Effects on Communications Satellite System Design

Starting from the analysis of recommendations and technical reports of the International Telecommunications Union on the stationkeeping and pointing accuracy requirements of quasi-geostationary communications satellites, the following effects of orbital inclination and yaw control error on the system design are discussed: (1) the excursion in longitude during a 24 h period; (2) the efficiency of the geostationary orbit utilization for systems with frequency reuse using linear orthogonal polarizations; (3) the angular tracking requirements of Earth station antennas; and (4) the performance of TDMA systems.