A new portable and economic Earth station for ISDN satellite communication

Abstract

NTT has developed a new compact-size, hand-transportable, user earth station (UES) that provides both of the ISDN user-network interfaces (ITU-T reccomendations I.430 and 1.431), applying the time division multiple access (TDMA) scheme. This user earth station provides a maximum of eight interfaces for I.430 and a maximum of two interfaces for 1.431. The new UES consists of four components. Each component can be readily transported, so an 1157 overall UES has good portability. The total weight of the user earth station is about 100 kg, and the volume has been reduced to one-third that of the former type of earth station. The disassembled station can be loaded into a small sedan. Using newly developed technology, this earth station offers very good economy and high performance, in spite of its small size. These earth stations were used in the Kobe area to restore telecommunications after the Great Hanshin Earthquake. Dozens of lines were activated with 11 UESs, which transmitted more American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics than several hundred calls per hour. It proved the effectiveness of the satellite communications and the new earth stations.This paper describes the configuration and characteristics of the newly developed LIES.