COMMUNICATION SATELLITE

Lecture by- Kanchan Bakade Assistant Prof: Satellite Communication by Pratt, Bostian and Dennis Roddy

INTRODUCTION
As the cost for launching, monitoring and

controlling the satellite is very high and the cost is recovered well within the expected lifetime of the spacecraft. The satellite is difficult to access after launch because of harsh enviornmental conditions and these are
shocks and vibration during launch Vaccum large temperature variation effect of small particles in space

DESIGN CONSIDERATION

w.r.t to communication

EIRP per carrier no. of carriers Coverage area No. of television channels Coverage area

domestic fixed satellite

direct broadcast satellite

w.r.t to environmental conditions

Zero gravity Difficulty of liquid fuel flow Benefit: facilitates operation of deployment of antennas and solar panels during launching Atmospheric pressure and temperature atm. Pressure: Extremly low 10-7 Torr; gearing used for stablization system External pressure 330-350 K in presence of sunlight to 95-120 K in eclipse condition Space Particles Examples: Cosmic rays, protons, electrons, meteoroids and man-made space debris Bombardment by particles cause a degradation in solar cells and certain solid state components within the satellite Magnetic Fields Deflects charged particles which r trapped in the region surrounding it. (Van allen belt) The electric charges affect electronic components Special manufacturing technique used to harden the electronic component against radiation.

LIFE TIME AND RELIABITLY

Components
high reliability in outer space Strategy to allow some components to fail

Two approaches are used

Space qualification Redundancy

SPACE QUALIFICATION

Each components is tested and that one is highly reliable in outer space. Total system of spacecraft is tested to ensure its reliability Three prototype models
Mechanical Thermal Electrical model

 Mechanical Model
Structural and mechanical parts Subject to vibration and shock testing G force to be encountered on launch

Thermal Model
Electronic packages and other components maintained at correct temperature Antennas to check for distortion of reflectors and displacement or bending

Electrical Model
Electronics parts corrected for electrical performance under total vacuum and wide range of temperature Antennas to correct beamwidth, gain and polarization properties.

Redundancy provided if one component fails, it can be switched over to other by command from the ground.

 RELIABILITY
Reliability theory to predict the future.

Reason for reliability calculation

End of life

Know the probability of the system Provide redundant components or subsystems Probab -ility of BATHTUB CURVE failure Gives probability of failure (pf)

Burn-in

time For elex equipment: (pf) is higher at the beginning of life. Component testing under rigorous conditions, i.e. in vaccum chamber and under radiant heat conditions. Semiconductors and ICs required to have high reliabitity are subject to burn-in periods from 100 t0 1000 hours.

SATELLITE SUBSYSTEMS
Attitude and Orbit Control System (AOCS) Rocket Motors move the satellite back to correct orbit Gas jets control the attitude of the satellite Telemetry,Tracking, Command and Monitoring (TTC&M) System partly on satellite and partly at the controlling earth station (ES)

Telemetry sends data from many sensors on the satellite, monitors satellite health Tracking System at ES; information on range, elevation and azimuth angles ; changes are detected Control System correct the position and attitude of the satellite

Control antenna pointing and communication system configuration

 Power System Electrical power from solar cells; used by transmitter and other electrical system; to support communication system Communication Subsystem Composed of one or more antennas, Rx and Tx over wide bandwidths at microwave frequencies and set of transponders.
Two types of transponder Linear or bent pipe transducer Received and retransmits at different (lower frequency) Baseband processing transponder used with digital signals

Satellite Antennas Designed to operate in single frequency band (eg. C or Ku band) Satellite which uses multiple frequency bands usually has four or more antennas.

ATTITUDE AND ORBIT CONTROL SYSTEM

 satellite's antennas point toward the earth several forces acting on an satellite that tend to change its attitude

and orbit.
The most important are the gravitational fields of the sun and the

moon, irregularities in the earth gravitational field, solar pressure from sun and variations in the earth's magnetic field. Solar pressure - tend to cause rotation of the satellite body. Careful design - minimize these effects, but the orbital period of the satellite makes many of the effects cyclic, which can cause nutation( a wobble) of the satellite. The AOCS damp out nutation and counter any rotational torque or movement. gravitational fields from the sun and the moon cause the orbit of a GEO satellite to change with time. The control system of the satellite must be able to move the satellite back into the equatorial plane before the orbital inclination becomes excessive.

Earth is not perfect sphere. At the equator, there are bulges of about 65 m at longitudes 15W and 165 E. satellite is accelerated toward one of two stable points in the GEO orbit at longitude 105 W and 75 E, as shown in Figure 3.2. To maintain accurate station keeping, the satellite must be periodically accelerated in the opposite direction to the forces acting on it. station-keeping maneuvers, using small rocket motors that can be controlled from the earth via the TTC&M system.

ATTITUDE CONTROL SYSTEM

two ways to make a satellite stable in orbit, when it is weightless. the satellite can be rotated at a rate between 30 and 100 rpm, to create a gyro-scopic force that provides stability of the spin axis and keeps it pointing in the same direction. Such satellites are known as spinners. The satellite can be stabilized by one or more momentum wheels. This is called a three-axis stabilized satellite. Increasing the speed of the momentum wheel causes the satellite to precess in the opposite direction, according the principle of conservation of angular momentum. In the spinner design, The satellite consists of a cylindrical drum covered in solar cells The communications system is mounted at the top of the drum and is driven by an electric motor in the opposite direction to the rotation of the satellite body to keep the antennas pointing toward the earth. Such satellites are called despun. In this axis of rotation is usually Y axis, which is maintained close to YR axis, perpendicular to orbital plane. Pitch correction is required only on the despun antenna system. Yaw and roll are controlled by pulsing radially mounted jets at the appropriate instant as the body of the satellite rotates.

Spinner satellite

3 axis stabilised satellite

 In a three-axis stabilized satellite,

one pair of gas jets is needed for each axis to provide for rotation in both directions of pitch, roll, and yaw. An additional set of controls, allowing only one jet on a given axis to be operated, provides for velocity increments in the X, Y, and Z directions.

Let us define a set of reference Cartesian axes (XR, YR, ZR) with the

satellite at the origin, as shown in Figure 3.4.

 The ZR axis is directed toward the center of the earth and is in the

plane of the satellite orbit. The XR axis is tangent to the orbital plane and lies in the orbital plane. The YR axis is perpendicular to the orbital plane. Rotation about the XR, YR, ZR axes is defined as roll , pitch and yaw. The axes XR, YR, ZR are defined with respect to the location of the satellite; and X, Y, Z, define the orientation of the satellite. Changes in a satellite's attitude cause the angles ,, to vary as the X, Y, and Z axes move relative to the fixed reference axes XR, YR, ZR. Attitude control of a three-axis stabilized satellite requires an increase or a decrease in the speed of the inertia wheel. When the upper or lower speed limit of the wheel is reached, it must be unloaded by operating a pair of gas jets and simultaneously reducing or increasing the wheel speed. Closed-loop control of attitude is employed on the satellite to maintain the correct attitude. When large, narrow beam antennas are used, the whole satellite may have to be stabilized within 0.01 on each axis.

Orbit control system

The various forces - steadily pull it out of the correct orbit. If the orbit is not circular, a velocity increase or decrease will have to

be made along the orbit, in the X-axis direction. Altitude corrections are made by operating the Z-axis gas jets.

 The inclination of a satellite increases at an average rate of about

0.85 per year. Most GEO satellites are specified to remain within a box of O.05 and so that fixed pointing antennas can be used at earth station.
Corrections are made every 2 to 4 weeks to keep the error small. when the inclination ; reached 0 , an opposite gasjets must be

operated to stop the satellite at that position. This procedure is known as N-S station keeping maneuver. Correcting the inclination of a satellite orbit requires more fuel to be expended than for any other orbital correction. E-W station keeping is effected by use of the X-axis jets of the satellite.
All of these satellite requires AOCS to enable them to point their

antennas or sensors correctly and all need to be able to maintain the correct orbit.

Station Keeping:

maintaining satellite in its correct orbital position. Gas jets are used along the 3 reference axes for velocity changes. These systems are used for making small corrections in orbits where low levels of thrust are required.

North South Station Keeping: satellite inclination changes at a rate of 0.85 per year. Practically corrections are made every 2 to 4 weeks to keep the error small. To correct the inclination drift, a velocity at right angles to the orbital plane in YR direction is applied. But when the inclination has reached zero degrees, an opposing jet is operated to stop the satellite at that position. This is known as north south station keeping. East West Station Keeping: Spacecraft located away from stable points at 75 E and 105 W, will try to drift towards these points. X axis jets are used every 2 or 3 weeks to counter the drift and a small velocity increment in the opposite direction East-west station keeping is necessary in all geostationary satellites because the spacing between the satellites is 2 or 3 degrees Excess drift is not tolerated because 6/4 GHz satellites are held within 0.1 of their allotted position and 14/12 GHz are held with 0.05.

TELEMETRY, TRACKING, COMMAND AND MONITORING

 The TTC&M is part of the satellite

management task.
Main functions of satellite

management are: to control the orbit and attitude of the satellite to monitor the status of all sensors and subsystems on the satellite To switch on or off sections of the communication system
Tracking is performed by the

earth station.

Monitoring system

collects data from many sensors within the satellite and sends these data to the controlling earth station. Sensors located on the satellite to monitor: pressure in the fuel tanks voltage and current in the power conditioning unit current drawn by each subsystem critical voltages and currents in the communications electronics. temperature These data are reported back to the earth by the telemetry system. The sighting devices used to maintain attitude are also monitored via the telemetry link: this is essential in case one should fail and cause the satellite to point in the wrong direction. The faulty unit must then be disconnected and a spare brought in, via the command system, or some other means of controlling attitude devised. .

Telemetry
data are usually digitized and transmitted as phase shift keying

(PSK) of a low-power telemetry carrier using time division techniques. A low data rate is used, E S have a narrow bandwidth and thus main-tain a high carrier to noise ratio. The entire TDM frame may contain 1000 of bits of data and take several seconds to transmit. At the controlling earth station a computer can be used to monitor, store, and decode the telemetry data so that the status of any system or sensor on the satellite can be determined immediately by the controller on the earth. Alarms can also be sounded if any vital parameter goes outside allowable limits.

Tracking
Used to determine the current orbit of a satellite. The earth station controlling the satellite can observe:

the Doppler shift of the telemetry carrier beacon transmitter carrier to determine the rate at which range is changing.

range is used to determine the orbital element.

Active determination of range can be achieved by:

Transmitting a pulse or sequence of pulses to the satellite Observing the time delay before the pulse is received again.

With pre-cision equipment at the earth stations, the position of the

satellite can be determined within 10 m.

Command
Used to launch the satellite and do the operation of satellite. Used to make changes in attitude and corrections to the orbit and to control

the communication system. During launch, it is used:

to control the firing of the apogee kick motor to spin up a spinner or extend the solar sails and antennas of a three-axis stabilized satellite. unauthorized attempts to make changes to the satellite's operation against inadvertent operation of a control due to error in a received command.

The command structure must possess safeguards against :

security by encryption of commands The control code is converted into a command word, which is sent in a TDM

frame to the satellite. After checking for validity in the satellite, the word is sent back to the control station via the telemetry link where it is checked again in the computer. If it is found to have been received correctly, an execute instruction will be sent to the satellite so that the command is executed. The entire process may take 5 to 10 sec but minimizes the risk of erroneous commands causing a satellite malfunction.

 During the launch phase and injection into geostationary orbit, the

main TTC&M system may be inoperable because the satellite does not have the correct attitude or has not extended its solar sails. A backup system is used at this time, which controls only the most important sections of the satellite.
The backup system provides control of:

the apogee kick motor the attitude control system orbit control thrusters the solar sail deployment mechanism the power conditioning unit.

With these controls, the satellite turned to face the earth, and

switched to full electrical power so that hand over to the main TTC&M system is possible.
In the event of failure of the main TTC&M system, the backup

system can be used to keep the satellite on station.

POWER SYSTEM

satellites obtain their electrical power from solar cells, which convert incident sunlight into electrical energy. The radiation intensity is of 1.39 kW/m2. Solar energy efficiency is typically 20 to 25% at beginning of life (BOL) but falls with time because of aging of the cells and etching of the surface by micrometeor impacts. At the end of life (EOL) of the satellite, about 15% extra area of solar cells is usually provided as an allowance for aging. A spin-stabilized satellite usually has a cylindrical body covered in solar cells and because of this half of the cells are not illuminated at all, and at the edges of the illuminated half, the low angle of incidence results in little electrical power being generated. To obtain 10 kW from a spinner requires a very large body on which to place the solar cells, which may then exceed the maximum payload dimensions of the launch vehicle. More recently, large communications satellites for direct broadcast operation generate up to 6 kW from solar power.

A three-axis stabilized satellite can make better use of its solar cell area, since the cells can be arranged on flat panels that can be rotated to maintain normal incidence of the sunlight. Only one-third of the total area of solar cells is needed relative to a spinner, with some saving in weight. by unfurling a folded solar array when the satellite reaches geostationary orbit, power in excess of 10 kW can be generated with large arrays.

 Solar sails rotated by electric motor once every 24 hour to keep cell in full

sunlight.
A rotary joint is used to transfer current from the rotating sail to the body of

the satellite.
The satellite must carry batteries to power the subsystems during launch

and during eclipses.

The communication system load may be shut down during eclipse, but this

technique is rarely used when telephony or data traffic is carried.

Batteries are usually of the nickel-hydrogen type which do not gas when

charging and have good re-liability and long life, and can be safely discharged to 70% of their capacity.
A power-conditioning unit controls the charging current and dumps excess

current from the solar cells into heaters or load resistors on the cold side of the satellite.
Sensors on the batteries, power regulator, and solar cells monitor

temperature, voltage, and current.

Typical battery voltages are 20 to 50 V with capacities of 20 to 100 ampere-

hours.

COMMUNICATION SUBSYSTEM

 The communication subsystem provides the receive and transmit coverage

for the satellite.

It consists of a communication antenna and a communication repeater. The main function of the antenna is to provide shaped downlink and uplink

beams for transmission and reception of communication signals in the operating frequency bands.
The antenna may be used to provide a signal link for the satellite telemetry,

command, and ranging subsystem.

The transponder consists of:

Receiver/down converter. Input multiplexer. Travelling wave tube amplifiers (TWTAs). Output multiplexer.

The uplink signals are first filtered by a waveguide bandpass filter with about a 600 MHz bandwidth and then amplified by a parametric or GaAs FET low noise amplifier with a noise figure of 2 to 4 dB. The amplified signals are then down converted to 3.7 to 4.2 GHz for C band and 11.7 to 12.2 GHz for Ku band. After down conversion, the signals are gain amplified by GaAs FET amplifier and passed through a ferrite isolator to the input multiplexer.
The input multiplexer separates the 500 MHz bandwidth into individual transponder channels. The input multiplexer consists of circulators, input filters, group delay equalizers, amplitude equalizers and output circulators. The TWTAs amplify the low level downlink signals to a high level for transmission back to earth. The output downlink signals from the channelized TWTAs are combined by the output multiplexer for retransmission to earth. The output multiplexer provides the required output out-of-band attenuation, as well as the attenuation necessary to suppress signal harmonics and noise generated by the TWTAs. Variable power dividers may be used to provide the necessary power split to select the desired transmit antenna coverage which can be selected by ground command.

Single conversion C-band transponder

The attenuator can be controlled via the uplink command system to set the

gain of the transponder and provides the necessary control to back off the output TWT.
The multiplexer is employed to separate the bandwidth into individual

transponder channels whose bandwidth depends on the satellite's mission.

Double conversion Ku-band transponder

The amplification and filtering are performed at 1 GHz and a relatively

high-level carrier is translated back to 11 GHz for amplification by the HPA. Phase variation across the pass band produces group delay distortion, which is troublesome with wide band FM signals and high speed phase shift keyed data transmission.

SATELLITE ANTENNA

Four main types of antennas are used on satellites. These are Wire antennas: monopoles and dipoles. Horn antennas. Reflector antennas. Array antennas.

Wire antenna

used at VHF (30-300MHz) and UHF(300-3000MHz) to provide communications for the TTC&M systems. They positioned carefully to provide omnidirectional coverage. A satellite antenna used to provide coverage of a certain area of earth surface and have contours of antenna gain which is EIRP of satellite antenna and transmitter.

Horn antenna

used at microwave frequencies when relatively wide beams are required. It is a good match between the waveguide impedance and free space. used as feeds for reflectors, either singly or in clusters.

It is difficult to obtain gains much greater than 23 dB or beam widths narrower than about 10 with horn antennas.
For higher gains or narrow beam widths a reflector antenna or array must be used.

Reflector antennas
illuminated by one or more horns and provide a larger aperture. For maximum gain, a plane wave is generated in the aperture of the

reflector.

This is achieved by Choosing a reflector profile that has equal path lengths from the feed to the aperture.

Satellite antennas often use modified paraboloidal reflector profiles to tailor

the beam pattern to a particular coverage zone.

Array antennas
Phased array antennas used to create multiple beams from a single

aperture, and have been used by Irid-ium and Globalstar to generate up to 16 beams from a single aperture for their LEO mobile telephone systems II.
Some basic relationships that used to illustrate the selection of antenna for

communication satellite are:

Antenna gain 3 dB beamwidth Efficiency Radiation pattern

Frequency Reuse antennas

It is of two types

Spatial beam seperation Orthogonal polarization

Spatial beam seperation

The same frequency bands are used for transmission and reception to

geographically seperated regions of earth station. By generating shaped beam using large clustered feeds, it is possible to reduce the side lobes from one beam to an acceptable level in the other zone. Interference between beams should be

-25 dB for FM transmitter -17 dB for digital tansmitter

Shaped zone beam, aim is to direct as much as power into its coverage

zone. By combining switched beam antenna with TDMA of the communication channel, much higher transmit EIRP can be achieved.

Orthogonal Polarization

Each beam is generated in two polarization. Reflector antenna tend to generate cross-polarized beam due to cross polarized radiation from the feed system and curvature of reflector. The requirement of narrow antenna beam with high gain over a small coverage zone leads to large antenna structure on the satellite. The antenna must be folded down during the launch phase. And once comes in orbit, the antennas can be deployed. This method doubles the information capacity of the transmitter.

Diagram w.r.t spatial beam seperation

Earth Station configuration and characteristics

Major RF component in an ES are the LNA of the Rxer and HPA of the transmitter Others are up and down convertors Low Noise Amplifiers (LNA) Large ES use parametric amplifier with liquid helium cooling at 4K above zero to achieve noise temperature of 20 to 40K at 4 GHz Small ES use GaAs FET amplifiers to achieve noise temperature in the range of 50 to120K at 4GHz and 120 to 300K at 11GHz 1:1 redundancy configuration is used in large ES.

Parametric Amplifier Figure shows an equivalent circuit; The two resonant circuits are coupled by a VVC provided by a varactor. Capacitance ; pump frequency p= 1+2 Amplification is achieved because the amplifier operates as a negative resistance amplifier. This provide very low noise temperature GaAs FET Amplifier Has very short gate length(0.5 m), yields very low noise temperature. It is reliable and low cost amplifier

High Power Amplifier (HPA)

HPA of 8.5kW of o/p power levels is use for large ES. Configured one HPA for each transponder In large ES , the o/ps of the up-converter are then

summed with hybrid couplers and a single broadband FDM signal is applied to the HPA. In small ES, it use solid-state amplifiers for the HPAs, by having one amplifier for each voice channel. The Ground Control Equipment
Multiplexing , modulation- demodulation operations carried out at bas band and IF. Up and down conversion interface between RF and IF of TXer and RXer Operations carried out on RF signals are amplifications and filtering with minimal combining and splitting.

 TWTA is used as HPA.

1:1 Redundancy

Uplink FDM/FM/FDMA Earth Station

FDM system transmit or receive many voice or data signals by

allocating separate frequencies to each signal. For an ES operates in FDM mode, terrestrial link is used. FDM signal consist of 12 telephone channels or 1872 channels, is frequency modulated onto 70MHz IF carrier.

Downlink FDM/FM/FDMA Earth Station

The bandwidth of the 70MHz IF stage is set between

1.25 and 36MHz depending on the number of channels carried by the transformer. FM demodulator used to achieve a low threshold in (C/N) for carriers upto 252 channels. After demodulation, band limited to 3.1 to 3.4kHz.

TDM Digital Earth Station

TDM system interrelate digital signals into frames which are

transmitted through separate transponders on satellite. 140MHz IF in ES when 120Mbps is sent by QPSK using 80MHz bandwidth 1.2 GHz IF in ES using Ku band and had 750MHz RF bandwidth One ES does not fill a complete frame in a TDMA system, it transmits a burst of QPSK signal Quantity of synchronization and timing equipment is needed in the transmit portion of GCE of a TDMA ES.

Transmitting/Receiving Equipment for TDM/TDMA Earth Station

Bit error rate in QPSK demod depends on accurate recovery of the carrier and on bit sampling instant. Achieve (C/N) of between 10 and 25dB at the demodulator input. Forward error correction(FEC) is coding equipment:

Individual data signal data encoded at any point between user and ES. Decision to use FEC is left to the user.

Direct Broadcast Television (DBS)

DBS using high power satellite and regional coverage

antennas. DBS TV satellite provide a good quality service to large region of earth with the same power transponder. Receive terminals are smaller and cheaper because EIRP lies in 54 to 60dB range which is 10 to 20dB better. Frequency band is vary from region to region and this uses Ku band and has carrier frequency of 14/12GHz Ku band: not used for terrestrial link, no intereference Smaller antenna size (high EIRP, narrow beamwidth) Parabolic reflectors 60cm in diameter compared to 3m for C band antennas