ON ORBIT DEMONSTRATION OF POINTING ACCURACY OF GROUND ANTENNAS (WITH AND WITHOUT TRACKING CAPABILITY) BY A FLYING GEO SATELLITE

Abstract

Geostationary Satellites (GEO) are being used commonly in communication market. The service providers uplink or downlink the signal by using their dedicated antennas (whether with or without tracking capability) to the GEO satellite. The satellite down-converts and amplifies the signal before sending back to the end users on Earth. Normally, the user set and adjust the uplink antenna to follow the GEO satellite movement as much as possible. As soon as there is no reduction in the link budget, this pointing assumed to be successful. On the other hand, the input power of the satellite, together with satellite longitude vs latitude, can give reasonable ideas about the accuracy of the ground antenna pointing. In the study, ground station pointing performance is shown with two different cases. One with tracking and one without tracking capability.