Survey of Ka-band satellites for wideband communications

Abstract

The interim generation of wideband communications satellites will be the wideband gapfiller satellites (WGS) which will preserve and augment the legacy missions of the Defense Satellite Communications System (DSCS) and the Global Broadcast Service (GBS), and add the new so-called two-way Ka. In order to provide for conceptual design of these satellites and plan for their acquisition, a survey has been conducted on currently operational and planned communications satellites that operate in the Ka-band. Our search has been performed to identify articles in the open literature on the description of the Ka-band satellites. Of particular interest are the salient features that pertain to the communications subsystems of these satellites. These features include frequencies, data rates, waveforms and frame structures. Data was obtained for the communications satellites from Italy, Germany, Japan and the European Space Agency (ESA), as well as some satellites from the United States (US). Many US Ka-band communications satellites are currently being developed. Unfortunately, information on waveforms and frame structures is not readily available in open literature on all of them. This article gives brief descriptions of these satellites. Feature parameters are presented in tabular format for comparison among different systems.