Pictorial Representation of Communication Satellite Resource Allocation Using STK

Abstract

ABSTRACTOver the past decade the need for communication satellites has grown dramatically, with the main consumer no longer being strictly the government cost‐effectiveness has become a main issue. Designing a communication satellite that will be cost effective, as well as, efficient for a given user community is often a daunting task; it requires analyzing many different hardware configurations to determine which will most effectively service the user community. Using a database of typical users and analyzing hardware trade‐offs is often times a preferred method of solving these types of analytical problems. More times than not this labor intensive analysis is done by hand, but to get reliable, easily reproducible results a “tool” can be developed to automate the analysis.In looking at an analytical problem as extensive as communication satellite resource allocation, simple numerical data does not always provide for the best answer. This paper describes our experience using Satellite Tool Kit (STK) a COTS product to graphically display the results of our satellite resource allocation tool. This tool is currently being used to analyze hardware trade offs for the design of a communication satellite constellation.