SATELLITE SUBSYSTEMS

Mikita Gandhi
EC department
ADIT
Satellite subsystems
1. Attitude and orbital Control Systems(AOCS):
This subsystem consists of rocket motors that are used to move the satellite back to the correct
orbit when external forces cause it to drift off station and gas jets or inertial devices that control
the attitude of the satellite.

2. Telemetry, tracking , command and monitoring system:

These systems are partly on the satellite and partly at the controlling earth station. The telemetry
system sends data derived from many sensors on the satellite, which monitor the satellite's
health, via a telemetry link to the controlling earth station. The tracking system is located at this
earth station and provides information on the range and the elevation and azimuth angles of the
satellite. Repeated measurement of these three parameters permits computation of orbital
elements, from which changes in the orbit of the satellite can be detected. Based on telemetry
data received from the satellite and orbital data obtained from the tracking system, the control
system is used to correct the position and attitude of the satellite. It is also used to control the
antenna pointing and communication system configuration to suit current traffic requirements,
and to operate switches on the satellite.

3. Power system:
All communications satellites derive their electrical power from solar cells. The power is used by
the communications system, mainly in its transmitters, and also by all other electrical systems on
the satellite. The latter use is termed housekeeping, since these subsystems serve to support the
communications system.
4. Communications Subsystems:
The communications subsystem is the major component of a communications satellite, and the
remainder of the satellite is there solely to support it. Frequently, the communications
equipment is only a small part of the weight and volume of the whole satellite. It is usually
composed of one or more antennas, which receive and transmit over wide bandwidths at
microwave frequencies, and a set of receivers and transmitters that amplify and retransmit the
incoming signals. The receiver-transmitter units are known as transponders. There are two types
of transponder in use on satellites: the linear or bent pipe transponder that amplifies the received
signal and retransmits it at a different, usually lower, frequency, and the baseband processing
transponder which is used only with digital signals, that converts the received signal to baseband,
processes it, and then retransmits a digital signal.

5. Satellite Antennas:
Although these form part of the complete communication system, they can be considered
separately from the transponders. On large GEO satellites the antenna systems are very complex
and produce beams with shapes carefully tailored to match the areas on the earth's surface
served by the satellite. Most satellite antennas are designed to operate in a singh~ frequency
band, for example, C band or Ku band. A satellite which uses multiple frequency bands usually has
four or more antennas.
Attitude & Orbit Control System
(AOCS)
• The attitude and orbit of a satellite must be controlled so that the satellite's
antennas point toward the earth and so that the user knows where in the sky to
look for the satellite.

• This is particularly important for GEO satellites since the earth station antennas
that are used with GEO satellites are normally fixed and movement of the satellite
away from its appointed position in the sky will cause a loss of signal.

• There are several forces acting on an orbiting satellite that tend to change its
attitude and orbit. The most important are the gravitational fields of the sun and
the moon, irregularities in the earth's gravitational field, solar pressure from the
sun, and variations in the earth's magnetic field.

• Why needed?
• Solar pressure acting on a satellite's solar sails and antennas, and the earth's
magnetic field generating eddy currents in the satellite's metallic structure as it
travels through the magnetic field, tend to cause rotation of the satellite body.
• Careful design of the structure can minimize these effects, but the orbital
period of the satellite makes many of the effects cyclic, which can cause
nutation (a wobble) of the satellite. The attitude control system must
damp out nutation and counter any rotational torque or movement.

• The earth is not quite a perfect sphere. At the equator, there are bulges of
about 65 m at longitudes 162° E and 348° E, with the result that a satellite
is accelerated toward one of two stable points in the GEO orbit at
longitude 75° E and 252° E

• To maintain accurate station keeping, the satellite must be periodically

accelerated in the opposite direction to the forces acting on it. This is done
as a sequence of station-keeping maneuvers, using small rocket motors
(sometimes called gas jets or thrusters) that can be controlled from the
earth via the TTC&M system.
Attitude Control System
• There are two ways to make a satellite stable in orbit, when it is
weightless.
• The body of the satellite can be rotated, typically at a rate between 30 and
100 rpm, to create a gyroscopic force that provides stability of the spin
axis and keeps it pointing in the same direction. Such satellites are known
as spinners. The popular Hughes 376 (now Boeing 376) satellite is an
example of a spinner design.
• Alternatively, the satellite can be stabilized by one or more momentum
wheels. This is called a three-axis stabilized satellite, of which the Hughes
(Boeing) 701 series is an example. The momentum wheel is usually a solid
metal disk driven by an electric motor. Either there must be one
momentum wheel for each of the three axes of the satellite, or a single
momentum wheel can be mounted on gimbals and rotated to provide a
rotational force about any of the three axes. Increasing the speed of the
momentum wheel causes the satellite to precess in the opposite direction,
according the principle of conservation of angular momentum.
• The spinner design of satellite is typified by many satellites built by the Hughes
Aircraft Corporation for domestic satellite communication systems. As shown in
Figures the satellite consists of a cylindrical drum covered in solar cells that
contains the power systems and the rocket motors. The communications system is
mounted at the top of the drum and is driven by an electric motor in the opposite
direction to the rotation of the satellite body to keep the antennas pointing toward
the earth. Such satellitesare called despun.
• The satellite is spun up by operating small radial gas jets mounted on the periphery
of the drum, at an appropriate point in the launch phase.
• A variety of liquid propulsion mixes have been used for the gas jets, the most
common being a variant of hydrazine (N2H4) which is easily liquefied under
pressure, but readily decomposes when passed over a catalyst.
• Increased power can be obtained from the hydrazine gas jets by electrically
heating the catalyst and the gas. Satellites that use liquid fuel thrusters have
standardized on bipropellant fuels, that is fuels that mix together to form the
thruster fuel.
• The most common bipropellents used for thruster operations are mono-methyl
hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide, although standard hydrazine is still used in place
of mono-methyl hydrazine by some satellite manufacturers.
• The bipropellants are hypogolic: that is they ignite spontaneously on contact, and
so do not need either a catalyst or a heater. By adjusting the flow of the
bipropellants, pulses of thrust can be generated at the correct time and in the
correct direction.
• There are two types of rocket motors used on satellites. one is the traditional
bipropellant thruster and second one is arc jets or ion thrusters.
• The fuel that is stored on a GEO
• satellite is used for two purposes: to fire the apogee kick motor that injects the
satellite into its final orbit, and to maintain the satellite in that orbit over its
lifetime.
• If the launch is highly accurate, a minimum amount of fuel is used to attain the
final orbit. If the launch is less accurate, more fuel must be used up in
maneuvering the satellite into position, and that reduces the amount left for
station keeping.
• A new development in thrusters uses a high voltage source to accelerate ions to a
very high velocity, thus producing thrust. The ion engine thrust is not large, but
because the engine can be driven by power from the solar cells it saves on
expendable fuel.
• Ion engines can also be used to slowly raise a GEO satellite from a transfer orbit to
GEO orbit, although the process takes months rather than hours as with a
conventional rocket engine.
• Arc jets or ion thrusters are mainly used for north-south station keeping,
which is where the greatest use of fuel is required for station-keeping
maneuvers, and became operational on the Hughes (Boeing) 600 series of
satellite buses. Arc jets or ion thrusters lack the total thrust required to
move satellites quickly (e.g., for major longitudinal changes in position)
but a small, continuous thrust is adequate to maintain N-S and E- W
position keeping.
• In a three-axis stabilized satellite, one pair of gas jets is needed for each
axis to provide for rotation in both directions of pitch, roll, and yaw. An
additional set of controls, allowing only one jet on a given axis to be
operated, provides for velocity increments in the X, Y, and Z directions.
When motion is required along a given axis, the appropriate gas jet is
operated for a specified period of time to achieve the desired velocity. The
opposing gas jet must be operated for the same length of time to stop the
motion when the satellite reaches its new position. Fuel is saved if the
velocity of the satellite is kept small, but progress toward the destination
is slow.
Three-axis stabilized Satellite
• ZR is directed towards the
centre of the earth-Yaw.
• XR is tangent to the
orbital plane-Roll.
• YR is perpendicular to the
orbital plane-Pitch.
• For northern hemisphere
the direction of XR is east
and that of YR is south.
• The satellite must be stabilized w.r.t. the reference axes to maintain
accurate pointing of antennas.
• The axis X, Y and Z define the orientation of the satellite.
• Changes in a satellite’s attitude cause angles θ, φ and ψ to vary as the X, Y
and Z axes move relative to the fixed reference XR, YR and ZR.
• In a spinner-type satellite, the axis of rotation is usually the Y axis, which is
maintained close to the YRaxis, perpendicular to the orbital plane. Pitch
correction is required only on the despun antenna system and can be
obtained by varying the speed of the despin motor. Yaw and roll are
controlled by pulsing radially mounted jets at the appropriate instant as
the body of the satellite rotates.
• Attitude control of a three-axis stabilized satellite requires an increase or a
decrease in the speed of the inertia wheel. If a constant torque exists
about one axis of the satellite, a continual increase or decrease in
momentum wheel speed is necessary to maintain the correct attitude.
When the upper or lower speed limit of the wheel is reached, it must be
unloaded by operating a pair of gas jets and simultaneously reducing or
increasing the wheel speed. Closed-loop control of attitude is employed
on the satellite to maintain
• the correct attitude. When large, narrow beam antennas are used, the
whole satellite may have to be stabilized within ±on each axis. The
references for the attitude control system may be the outer edge of the
earth's disk, as observed with infrared sensors, the sun, or one or more
stars.
Orbit Control System
• a geostationary satellite is subjected to several forces that tend to
accelerate it away from its required orbit. The most important, for the
geostationary satellite, are the gravitation forces of the moon and the sun,
which cause inclination of the orbital plane, and the nonspherical shape of
the earth around the equator, which causes drift of the subsatellite point.
• There are many other smaller forces that act on the satellite causing the
orbit to change. Accurate prediction of the satellite position a week or 2
weeks ahead requires a computer program with up to 20 force
parameters; we shall restrict our discussion here to the two major effects.
• Figure shows a diagram of an inclined orbital plane close to the
geostationary orbit. For the orbit to be truly geostationary, it must lie in
the equatorial plane, be circular, and have the correct altitude. The various
forces acting on the satellite will steadily pull it out of the correct orbit; it
is the function of the orbit control system to return it to the correct orbit.
This cannot be done with momentum wheels since linear accelerations
are required. Gas jets that can impart velocity changes along the three
references axes of the satellite are required.
• If the orbit is not circular, a velocity increase or decrease will have to be made
along the orbit, in the X-axis direction, On a spinning satellite, this is achieved
by pulsing the radial jets when they point along the X axis. On a three-axis
stabilized satellite, there will usually be two pairs of X-axis jets acting in
opposite directions, one pair of which will be operated for a predetermined
length of time to provide the required velocity change. The orbit of a
geostationary satellite-remains approximately circular for long periods of time
and does not need frequent velocity corrections to maintain circularity.
Altitude corrections are made by operating the Z-axis gas jets.
• The inclination of the orbit of a satellite that starts out in a geostationary orbit
increases at an average rate of about 0.85° per year, with an initial rate of
change of inclination for a satellite in an equatorial orbit between 0.75° to
0.94° per year. Most GEO satellites are specified to remain within a box of
±0.05°and so, in practice, corrections, called a north-south station-keeping
maneuver are made every 2 to 4 weeks' to keep the error small. It has become
normal to split the E-W and N-S maneuvers so that at intervals of 2 weeks the
E- W corrections are made first and then after 2 more weeks, the N-S
corrections are made. If arc jets or ion thrusters are used for N-S station-
keeping maneuvers, these tend to operate almost continuously since their
thrust levels are low when compared with traditional liquid fueled engines.
• Correcting the inclination of a satellite orbit requires more fuel to be
expended than for any other orbital correction. This places a weight
penalty on those satellites that must maintain very accurate station
keeping, and reduces the communications payload they can carry. As
much as half the total satellite weight at launchmay be station keeping
fuel when the satellite's expected lifetime on orbit is 15 years.
• East-west station keeping is effected by use of the X-axis jets of the
satellite. For a satellite located away from the stable points at 75° E and
252° E, a slow drift toward these points will occur. Typically, the X-ax!s jets
are pulsed every 2 or 3 weeks to counter the drift and add a small velocity
increment in the opposite direction. The satellite then drifts through its
nominal position, stops at a point a fraction of a degree beyond it, and
then drifts back again. East-west station keeping requires only a modest
amount of fuel and is necessary on all geostationary communications
satellites to maintain the spacing between
• adjacent satellites. With orbital locations separated by 2° or 3°, east-west
drifts in excess of a fraction of a degree cannot be tolerated, and most
GEO satellites are held within ±0.05°of their allotted longitude.
Telemetry, tracking, command &
monitoring
The TTC&M system is essential to the successful operation of a communications
satellite. It is part of the satellite management task, which also involves an earth
station, usually dedicated to that task, and a group of personnel. The main functions
of satellite management are to control the orbit and attitude of the satellite, monitor
the status of all sensors and subsystems on the satellite, and switch on or off sections
of the communication system. The TTC&M earth station may be owned and operated
by the satellite owner, or it may be owned by a third party and provide TTC&M
services under contract.

On large geostationary satellites, some repointing of individual antennas may be

possible, under the command of the TTC&M system. Tracking is performed primarily
by the earth station.
Telemetry and Monitoring system
 The monitoring system collects data from many sensors within the satellite and sends these
data to the controlling earth station. There may be several hundred sensors located on the
satellite to monitor pressure in the fuel tanks, voltage and current in the power conditioning
unit, current drawn by each subsystem, and critical voltages and currents in the
communications electronics.
 The temperature of many of the subsystems is important and must be kept within
predetermined limits, so many temperature sensors are fitted.
 The sensor data, the status of each subsystem, and the positions of switches in the
communication system are reported back to the earth by the telemetry system.
 The sighting devices used to maintain attitude are also monitored via the telemetry link: this
is essential in case one should fail and cause the satellite to point in the wrong direction. The
faulty unit must then be disconnected and a spare brought in, via the command system, or
some other means of controlling attitude devised.
 Telemetry data are usually digitized and transmitted as phase shift keying (PSK) of a low-
power telemetry carrier using time division techniques.
 A low data rate is normally used to allow the receiver at the earth station to have a narrow
bandwidth and thus maintain a high carrier to noise ratio.
 The entire TDM frame may contain thousands of bits of data and take several seconds to
transmit.
 At the controlling earth station a computer can be used to monitor, store, and decode the
telemetry data so that the status of any system or sensor on the satellite can be determined
immediately by the controller on the earth.
 Alarms can also be sounded if any vital parameter goes outside allowable limits.
Tracking
 A number of techniques can be used to determine the current orbit of a satellite. Velocity
and acceleration sensors on the satellite can be used to establish the change in orbit from the
last known position, by integration of the data.
 The earth station controlling the satellite can observe the Doppler shift of the telemetry
carrier or beacon transmitter carrier to determine the rate at which range is changing.
 Together with accurate angular measurements from the earth station antenna, range is used
to determine the orbital elements.
 Active determination of range can be achieved by transmitting a pulse, or sequence of pulses,
to the satellite and observing the time delay before the pulse is received again.
 The propagation delay in the satellite transponder must be accurately known, and more than
one earth station may make range measurements.
 If a sufficient number of earth stations with an adequate separation are observing the
satellite, its position can be established by triangulation from the earth station by
simultaneous range measurements.
 Ranging tones are also used for range measurement.
 A carrier generated on board the satellite is modulated with a series of sine waves at
increasing frequency, usually harmonically related. The phase of the sine wave modulation
components is compare data an earth station, and the number of wavelengths of each
frequency is calculated.
command
 A secure and effective command structure is vital to the successful launch and operation of
any communications satellite.
 The command system is used to make changes in attitude and corrections to the orbit and to
control the communication system.
 During launch, it is used to control the firing of the apogee kick motor and to spin up a
spinner or extend the solar sails and antennas of a three-axis stabilized satellite.
 The command structure must possess safeguards against unauthorized attempts to make
changes to the satellite's operation, and also against inadvertent operation of a control due
to error in a received command.
 Encryption of commands and responses is used to provide security in the command system.
 A typical system of the type shown in Figure will originate commands at the control terminal
of the computer. The control code is converted into a command word, which is sent in a TDM
frame to the satellite.
 After checking for validity in the satellite, the word is sent back to the control station via the
telemetry link where it is checked again in the computer.
 If it is found to have been received correctly, an execute instruction will be sent to the satellite
so that the command is executed.
 The entire process may take 5 or 10 s, but minimizes the risk of erroneous commands causing
a satellite malfunction.
Power System
 All communications satellites obtain their electrical power from solar cells, which convert
incident sunlight into electrical energy.
 Some deep space planetary research satellites have used thermonuclear generators to supply
electrical power, but because of the danger to people on the earth if the launch should fail
and the nuclear fuel be spread over an inhabited area, communications satellites have not
used nuclear generators.
 Two types of solar cells on the satellites. A spin-stabilized satellite usually has a cylindrical
body covered in solar cells. Because the solar cells are on a cylindrical surface, half of the
cells are not illuminated at all, and at the edges of the illuminated half, the low angle of
incidence results in little electrical power being generated.
 A three-axis stabilized satellite can make better use of its solar cell area, since the cells can be
arranged on flat panels that can be rotated to maintain. normal incidence of the sunlight.
 The satellite must carry batteries to power the subsystems during launch and during eclipses.
 By locating the satellite 20° W of the longitude of the service area, the eclipse will occur after
1 A.M. local time for the service area, when shutdown is more acceptable.
 Batteries are usually of the nickel-hydrogen type which do not gas when charging and have
good reliability and long life, and can be safely discharged to 70% of their capacity.
Communication Subsystems
• It is the subsystem, that earns the revenue for the
system operator, it is designed to provide the
largest traffic capacity possible.
• Received power level, even with large aperture
earth station antennas, is very small rarely
exceeds 10-10 W.
• In high-capacity satellites, the available bands of
frequencies are reused by employing several
directional beams at the same frequency and
orthogonal polarizations at the same frequency.
• Large GEO satellite use both 6/4 GHz and
14/11 GHz bands to obtain more bandwidth.
• For satellite communications, some standard
bands can only be used. Bands currently used
for majority services are 6/4 GHz, 14/11 GHz
and 30/20 GHz.
• Generally, higher frequency is required for
transmit path to the satellite because receiver
would overload if both the frequencies are
same.
• The standard spacing between GEO satellite
was originally set at 3o.
• Because of heavy traffic, it was reduced to 2o, so new
slots of 6/4 GHz and 14/11 GHz were opened for new
satellite.
• Satellite systems designed for Ku band (14/11 GHz)
and Ka band (30/20 GHz) have narrower antenna
beams and better control of coverage patterns than
that for C band (6/4 GHz).
• Presently focus is on Ka band in which 2 GHz of
bandwidth is available for satellite systems on
exclusive or shared basis. That is equal to combined
allocation of C and Ku band.
• Attenuation (in dB) in rain increases at roughly the
square of the frequency. Propagation in rain
becomes a major factor at frequencies above 10 GHz
Transponders
• Signals transmitted by an earth station are
received at the satellite by either a zone beam
or a spot beam antenna.
• The received signals on satellite is taken to
two low noise amplifier to provide
redundancy.
• Redundancy is provided wherever failure of
one component will cause the loss of
significant part of satellite communication
capacity.
• The 500 MHz bandwidth is divided up into
channels often 36 MHz wide, which are
handled by different transponders.
• In a large satellite there may be four or five
beams to which any transponders can be
connected.
• The switch setting can be controlled from the
earth to allow reallocation of transponders.
• The reason for using narrower bandwidth
transponders is to avoid excessive
intermodulation problems when transmitting
several carriers simultaneously.
• We can use one transponder for each earth station.
• Many domestic satellites operating in 6/4 GHz band
to carry 24 active transponders.
• The center frequency of transponders are spaced 40
MHz apart, to allow guard bands for 36 MHz
channels.
• With a total of 500 MHz available, a single
polarization satellite can accommodate 12
transponders across the band.
• When frequency reuse by orthogonal polarizations is
adopted, 24 transponders can be accommodated in
same 500 MHz bandwidth.
• When more than one signal shares a
transponder( using FDMA), the power
amplifier must be run below its maximum
output power to maintain linearity and reduce
intermodulation products.
• TDMA can be used to increase the output
power of transponders by limiting the
transponder to single access.
• However, most of TDMA systems are hybrid
FDMA-TDMA schemes known as
Multifrequency TDMA (MF-TDMA), in which
several TDMA signals share the transponder
bandwidth using FDMA.
6/4 GHz Bent Pipe Transponder
• The output power amplifier is usually a solid
state power amplifier (SSPA), unless a very
high power is required (> 50 W), when a
traveling wave tube amplifier(TWTA) would be
used.
• Transponders can also be arranged so that
there are spare transponders available in the
event of a total failure.
On board Processing Transponder

• FEC – Forward Error

Correction
Satellite Antennas
• Four main types of antennas are used on
satellites.
• Wire antennas: monopoles and dipoles
• Horn Antennas
• Reflector Antennas
• Array Antennas
Wire antenna
• Wire antennas are used primarily at VHF and UHF to
provide communications for the TTC&M systems
• They are positioned with great care on the body of
the satellite in an attempt to provide omnidirectional
coverage.
• Most satellites measure only a few wavelengths at
VHF frequencies, which makes it difficult to get the
required antenna patterns, and there tend to be
some orientations of the satellite in which the
sensitivity of the TTC&M system is reduced by nulls
in the antenna pattern.
Horn Antenna
• Horn antennas are used at microwave frequencies when
relatively wide beams are required, as for global coverage.
• A horn is a flared section of waveguide that provides an
aperture several wavelengths wide and a good match
between the waveguide impedance and free space.
• Horns are also used as feeds for reflectors, either singly or in
clusters.
• Horns and reflectors are examples of aperture antennas that
launch a wave into free space from a waveguide.
• It is difficult to obtain gains much greater than 23 dB or beam
widths narrower than about 10° with horn antennas.
• For higher gains or narrow beam widths a reflector antenna
or array must be used.
Reflector Antenna
• Reflector antennas are usually illuminated by one or more
horns and provide a larger aperture than can be achieved
with a horn alone.
• For maximum gain, it is necessary to generate a plane wave in
the aperture of the reflector. This is achieved by choosing a
reflector profile that has equal path lengths from the feed to
the aperture, so that all the energy radiated by the feed and
reflected by the reflector reaches the aperture with the same
phase angle and creates a uniform phase front.
• One reflector shape that achieves this with a point source of
radiation is the parabolic, with a feed placed at its focus.
• It is commonly used for earth station antennas.
• An aperture antenna has a gain G given by

• where A is the area of the antenna aperture in meters, λis the

operating wavelength in meters, and ηA is the aperture
efficiency of the antenna.
• If the aperture is circular,

where D is the diameter of the circular aperture in meters.

• A useful rule of thumb is that the Ѳ3 dB beam width in a given
plane for an antenna with dimension D in that plane is

• where Ѳ3dBis the beam width between half power points of

the antenna pattern and D is the aperture dimension in the
same units as the wavelength λ.
• For antennas with, = 60%, the gain is
approximately

• Where Ѳ3dBis in degrees and G is not in

decibels.