Abstract

From the first satellite launched in 1957, these systems always have drawn the attention of telecommunications operators. Thanks to their natural orbit, satellites can provide coverage to the entire globe or serve a vast region. Is this feature that makes them potential systems to extend current ground networks over the space. The first satellites were conceived as a single backhaul system to broadcast television or phone calls. Over the years, this concept evolved to a group of satellites that compose a constellation to interconnect any user around the globe. Nowadays, these constellations are still evolving to massive architectures with thousands of satellites that are interconnected between them composing satellite networks. Additionally, with the emergence of 5G, the community has started to discuss how to integrate satellites in this infrastructure. A review of the evolution of the satellites for broadband communications is presented in this chapter, discussing the novel and future proposed architectures. The presented work concludes with the potential of these satellite systems to compose a hybrid and heterogeneous architecture in which space, air, and ground networks become interconnected.

Highlights

  • Since 1957 with the launch of the first artificial satellite Sputnik 1, space has been populated by a wide variety of satellite systems

  • Space has been populated by a wide variety of satellite systems

  • Constellations of Low Earth Orbits (LEO) satellites have emerged as the necessary infrastructure to support these new services in space

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Summary

Introduction

Since 1957 with the launch of the first artificial satellite Sputnik 1, space has been populated by a wide variety of satellite systems. Iridium or Globalstar are examples of the viability of the system [4, 5] These constellations enabled to think about systems in which satellites are interconnected with Inter-Satellite Links (ISL) to exchange data [6]. The apparition of the New Space concept and all the associated technology development drove the novel progress in the broadband telecommunications domain [11]. The apparition of the mega-constellations became an important disruption in the concept of traditional constellations [12–14] This architecture proposes the deployment of thousands of satellites to provide global Internet coverage. The Internet of Satellites (IoSat) paradigm [17] proposes the establishment of temporal satellite networks according to the necessity to exchange data This dynamic environment poses new communications challenges that must be addressed in future researches.

The apparition of communications satellites
The era of low-altitude satellite constellations
Interconnecting satellites to compose satellite networks
The disruption of New Space in broadband telecommunications
The internet of satellites paradigm
The emergence of 5G in satellite systems
Conclusions and way forward
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