Satellite Communications—Intermediate

Presenter: Dr Mike Ryan

Click Register to view available course delivery modes (virtual/face-to-face), dates, and locations.

The registration page allows you to register individually or to register groups of up to 15.

Duration: 3 Days | Price: $2,970

 

Course Aim

This three-day Satellite Communications—Intermediate course incorporates our Satellite Communications—Overview course as the first day and forms the first three days of the five-day Satellite Communications—Advanced. This Satellite Communications—Intermediate course provides attendees with a more-detailed understanding of the issues associated with the design and operation of modern satellite communications systems. This course extends the Overview course to provide a more-detailed understanding of the issues associated with the design and operation of modern satellite communications systems. The additional two days investigate further the nature of the Earth-satellite propagation, antenna selection, modulation, multiple access techniques, source coding, channel coding, and link budgets. The course is therefore suited project managers of satellite communications acquisitions, engineering managers, engineers, network designers, and operations managers.

Some basic familiarity with communications fundamentals is assumed so prior attendance at our Fundamental of Communications Systems course is recommended. Attendees receive a copy of the presenter’s book Principles of Satellite Communications.

Course Outline

Day 1: Satellite Communications—Overview short course

Propagation: Electromagnetic waves | Transmission path losses and calculation | Propagation for mobile satellite communications systems

Antennas: Basic antenna theory | Antenna gain | Dipoles | Horn antennas | Parabolic antennas | Patch antennas | Phased-array antennas | Multi-beam antennas | Pointing error | Tracking

Modulation and Multiplexing: Analogue modulation Bandwidth | Noise effect | Digital modulation | PSK | Spectral efficiency | Multiplexing – Frequency division multiplexing / Time division multiplexing

Source Coding: Quantisation | Entropy coding | Predictive coding| Transform coding | Video coding | Speech coding | Encryption—symmetric (secret key) encryption / asymmetric (public key) encryption / Post-quantum cryptography (PQC) algorithms | Harvest-now-decrypt-later (HNDL) attacks

Multiple Access: Frequency-division Multiple Access (FDMA) | Time-division Multiple Access (TDMA) | Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA)

Channel Coding: Information theory | Reason for channel coding | Block codes | Convolutional codes | Viterbi decoding | Punctured, interleaved, concatenated codes | Compound codes—Turbo codes / LPDC codes | Channel coding in satellite communications

Link Budget: Uplink and downlink model | System parameters | Example link budget

Satellite Communications Architectures: Generic architectures—simplex (broadcast) / point-to-point / mesh / star / split duplex | Inter-satellite links | Ground terminal architectures | Transponder architectures | Example commercial and military architectures

Course Material

The following resources will be provided to attendees of this course:

  1.  A copy of the author’s book Principles of Satellite Communications.

  2. A PDF copy of the PowerPoint presentations used for the course.