| Preface | p. xv |
| Acknowledgments | p. xix |
| What this book is all about | p. 1 |
| Introduction | p. 1 |
| Overview | p. 2 |
| An overview of satellite communications | p. 5 |
| Electronic communications | p. 5 |
| Repeater stations | p. 7 |
| Position of the satellite | p. 7 |
| Some advantages of satellite communications | p. 8 |
| Some history | p. 9 |
| Elliptical and geosynchronous orbits | p. 13 |
| Frequencies used by satellites | p. 16 |
| Satellite footprints | p. 18 |
| Summary | p. 19 |
| Gravity and the geostationary satellite | p. 21 |
| Introduction | p. 21 |
| Units used in this text | p. 22 |
| Fundamentals of gravity | p. 25 |
| Geostationary satellites | p. 27 |
| Gravity | p. 28 |
| Centrifugal force | p. 32 |
| A quick review of calculus | p. 32 |
| Determining the geostationary altitude | p. 37 |
| Orbits | p. 40 |
| Placing a geostationary satellite in its orbit | p. 46 |
| Potential damage to satellites: Van Allen radiation belts | p. 48 |
| Other satellite orbits--Molniya | p. 49 |
| Other satellite orbits--Walker constellations | p. 50 |
| Low Earth-orbiting satellites (LEO) | p. 51 |
| Comparison of orbit features | p. 54 |
| Summary | p. 55 |
| The geometry of the geostationary satellite | p. 59 |
| Introduction | p. 59 |
| Satellite distance and angles | p. 60 |
| Earth station-to-satellite distance | p. 61 |
| Azimuth and elevation angles from the Earth station to the satellite | p. 63 |
| Variation of elevation angle and distance to satellite with latitude | p. 66 |
| Antenna mounts for home dishes | p. 67 |
| The polar mount | p. 67 |
| Error angle when using polar mount | p. 69 |
| Mounts for larger antennas | p. 71 |
| Summary | p. 71 |
| Electricity and magnetism | p. 73 |
| Introduction | p. 73 |
| The electric field, electrostatics, and electricity | p. 75 |
| Voltage as a scalar potential | p. 82 |
| The magnetic field | p. 84 |
| Magnetic field produced by a current of electricity | p. 87 |
| Maxwell's displacement currents | p. 92 |
| Summary | p. 97 |
| Maxwell's equations | p. 101 |
| Introduction | p. 101 |
| Some general concepts | p. 102 |
| Vector gradient | p. 102 |
| Vector divergence and the surface integral | p. 102 |
| The vector curl | p. 104 |
| Maxwell's first equation | p. 105 |
| Maxwell's second equation | p. 106 |
| Maxwell's third equation | p. 106 |
| Maxwell's fourth equation | p. 107 |
| Maxwell's four equations in vector format | p. 109 |
| Maxwell's equations in free space | p. 111 |
| Scalar and vector potentials | p. 112 |
| Summary | p. 115 |
| The wave equation | p. 117 |
| Introduction | p. 117 |
| A puzzle | p. 118 |
| Velocity of light and of electromagnetic waves | p. 121 |
| Traveling waves | p. 124 |
| Electromagnetic plane waves | p. 126 |
| Polarization | p. 130 |
| Energy in the electromagnetic wave | p. 131 |
| Resistance, inductance, and capacitance | p. 131 |
| Energy density of an electric field | p. 131 |
| Energy density of magnetic field | p. 132 |
| The power per square meter in the electromagnetic wave | p. 134 |
| The Poynting vector | p. 136 |
| Summary | p. 136 |
| Transmission lines and radiation | p. 139 |
| Introduction | p. 139 |
| Some basic concepts about transmission lines | p. 140 |
| Inductance, capacitance, AC current, and voltage | p. 140 |
| The equivalent circuit to a transmission line | p. 142 |
| Analysis of the equivalent circuit | p. 142 |
| Sinusoidal representation of the wave equation | p. 144 |
| Characteristic impedance | p. 145 |
| Some typical values | p. 146 |
| The terminated transmission line | p. 146 |
| The shorted, or open-terminated, line, standing waves | p. 149 |
| E and B waves on the transmission line | p. 150 |
| The flared open-ended transmission line | p. 151 |
| Waveguides | p. 152 |
| Radiation and the accelerating charge | p. 156 |
| The mechanism of electromagnetic wave generation | p. 159 |
| Retarded potentials and radiation | p. 162 |
| Summary | p. 168 |
| Parabolic antennas | p. 171 |
| Introduction | p. 171 |
| Dipoles, horns, and arrays | p. 172 |
| A brief history | p. 176 |
| Geometry of the parabola | p. 179 |
| The parabolic antenna pattern--introduction | p. 182 |
| Gain, aperture illumination, beamwidth, and sidelobes | p. 187 |
| The small dish for satellite reception | p. 191 |
| The Cassegrainian parabola | p. 191 |
| Noise entering the antenna | p. 192 |
| Noise temperature, cosmic noise, and atmospheric absorption | p. 194 |
| Noise temperature and attenuation | p. 197 |
| Antenna gain measurement | p. 198 |
| Feed systems | p. 199 |
| Resume of important equations | p. 206 |
| Antenna gain | p. 206 |
| Effective antenna aperture area | p. 206 |
| Half-power beam width | p. 206 |
| Polarization angle | p. 207 |
| Off-axis gain loss | p. 207 |
| Antenna noise temperature | p. 207 |
| Summary | p. 208 |
| Noise | p. 211 |
| Introduction | p. 211 |
| Thermal noise | p. 212 |
| Attenuators | p. 215 |
| Amplifiers | p. 217 |
| Noise figure | p. 219 |
| Other sources of noise | p. 219 |
| Solar noise | p. 219 |
| Intermodulation | p. 220 |
| Interference | p. 224 |
| Summary | p. 225 |
| Atmosphere and ionosphere | p. 227 |
| Introduction | p. 227 |
| Atmospheric gases | p. 229 |
| Beam spread loss | p. 229 |
| Atmospheric attenuation | p. 230 |
| Weather | p. 232 |
| Rain | p. 233 |
| Attenuation exceeded 0.01% of an average year | p. 233 |
| Attenuation exceeded for other percentage times | p. 237 |
| Worst month | p. 238 |
| Clouds | p. 238 |
| Ice crystals and snow | p. 245 |
| Depolarization | p. 245 |
| Site diversity | p. 246 |
| Scintillation | p. 246 |
| Noise temperature | p. 248 |
| The ionosphere | p. 248 |
| Faraday rotation | p. 248 |
| Ionospheric scintillation | p. 249 |
| Summary | p. 249 |
| Earth stations and introduction to modulation | p. 251 |
| Introduction | p. 251 |
| Configuration of an Earth station | p. 251 |
| Introduction to modulation | p. 254 |
| Amplitude modulation | p. 255 |
| Frequency modulation | p. 256 |
| Digital modulation | p. 260 |
| Multiple access | p. 270 |
| Frequency division multiple access systems | p. 270 |
| Time division multiple access systems | p. 271 |
| Code division multiple access systems | p. 273 |
| Comparison of multiple access systems | p. 273 |
| Summary | p. 276 |
| The satellite downlink and its link budget | p. 279 |
| Introduction | p. 279 |
| The satellite transponder EIRP | p. 280 |
| Noise power | p. 282 |
| Antenna noise temperature | p. 283 |
| Rain attenuation noise temperature | p. 284 |
| Microwave device loss | p. 284 |
| Total noise power | p. 284 |
| Noise bandwidth | p. 285 |
| C/N power ratio | p. 286 |
| C/N and S/N | p. 287 |
| Noise voltage input and output | p. 291 |
| Noise output voltage from the detector | p. 292 |
| The noise amplitude above threshold | p. 293 |
| TV postdetection filters | p. 294 |
| The improvement factor | p. 297 |
| The signal output from the detector | p. 297 |
| The signal-to-noise power ratio, S/N | p. 298 |
| Reception quality, C/N and S/N | p. 299 |
| Summary | p. 300 |
| The satellite uplink, the satellite, and the link budget | p. 303 |
| Introduction | p. 303 |
| Flux density, EIRP, and losses | p. 303 |
| The uplink | p. 304 |
| Special uplink considerations | p. 306 |
| Companded FM SCPC | p. 307 |
| The satellite | p. 309 |
| Multibeam satellites | p. 309 |
| On-board processing | p. 312 |
| Overall link budget--noise | p. 313 |
| Link optimization in FM systems | p. 314 |
| Summary | p. 316 |
| The FM threshold | p. 317 |
| Introduction | p. 317 |
| Review of S/N versus C/N above threshold | p. 318 |
| The click mechanism | p. 320 |
| The S/N below threshold | p. 321 |
| The RMS noise frequency | p. 322 |
| Probability of a click | p. 323 |
| The click rate, energy per hertz, and click power | p. 325 |
| The S/N versus C/N above and below threshold | p. 325 |
| Summary | p. 327 |
| Digital communications | p. 329 |
| Introduction | p. 329 |
| Some prominent personalities | p. 330 |
| Harry Nyquist | p. 330 |
| R. V. L. Hartley | p. 332 |
| Claude Elwood Shannon | p. 333 |
| Richard Wesley Hamming | p. 336 |
| Andrew J. Viterbi | p. 337 |
| Source and channel coding and decoding | p. 337 |
| Bit errors and error correction | p. 338 |
| Bandwidth and roll-off | p. 342 |
| Symbol and bit errors in received QPSK | p. 344 |
| Forward error correction (FEC) and Viterbi coding | p. 349 |
| The compressed video system | p. 351 |
| Statistical multiplexing | p. 355 |
| Summary | p. 356 |
| Video compression | p. 359 |
| Introduction | p. 359 |
| Resolution | p. 359 |
| Redundancy | p. 360 |
| How high compression is achieved | p. 361 |
| MPEG | p. 361 |
| Discrete cosine transform | p. 363 |
| Two-dimensional DCT | p. 366 |
| Intracoding an I picture | p. 367 |
| Zigzag scanning and entropy coding | p. 368 |
| Decoder | p. 370 |
| Coding moving pictures | p. 371 |
| Motion prediction | p. 372 |
| Motion compensation | p. 373 |
| MPEG audio | p. 374 |
| Summary | p. 374 |
| Using the CD program | p. 377 |
| Introduction | p. 377 |
| Program contents | p. 378 |
| Some generalities concerning program inputs | p. 379 |
| Installing the CD programs | p. 380 |
| Conclusions | p. 381 |
| The past | p. 381 |
| The present | p. 382 |
| The future | p. 383 |
| Historical perspective | p. 387 |
| A review of vector analysis | p. 423 |
| Link budget analysis | p. 443 |
| Glossary, units, and symbols | p. 461 |
| About the Authors | p. 467 |
| Index | p. 469 |
| Table of Contents provided by Syndetics. All Rights Reserved. |
