Subject : Satellite Communication and Networks

Topic : Earth station

Marks: 5 M

Earth station antennas can operate in uplink as well as in downlink modes based on sending or receiving information to or from the specified satellite.

Normally earth stations employ high gain antennas and therefore beam width of these antennas is very small.

Because of narrow beam width it becomes necessary for earth stations to track its specific satellite by minimizing pointing errors.

The geostationary satellites more within a window of plus/minus 3 degrees.In this case with high gain antennas if beamwidth becomes narrower than 3 degree then it becomes necessary to track the satellite.

LEO satellites remains visible to earth stations for shorter periods and hence earth station needs to continuously track them in visible range.