Reliability Considerations for Multiple-Spot-Beam Communication Satellites

Multiple-spot-beam antennas for communication satellites offer the potential for greatly increasing the traffic capacity of the satellite since the allocated frequency band can be reused in the various spot beams. 1-4 In such a configuration, we might reduce the number of required satellite transponders by allocating a single wideband transponder, consisting of a receiver and a transmitter, to each antenna port as shown in Fig. 1. 575 RECEIVER 1 TRANSMITTER 1 RECEIVER 2 TRANSMITTER 2 SWITCH RECEIVER N TRANSMITTER N Fig. 1--Satellite transponder.