DISASTERCASTEING 101?
Google’s push to become a major ISP is already well under way, with Google Fiber deployed in a handful of U.S. cities. Their next big rollout may happen well above the Earth’s surface: Google is reportedly preparing a fleet of 180 satellites that will blanket the globe with Internet access.
The company has been very public about ambitions to reach the nearly two-thirds of the world’s population that has inadequate connectivity to the ‘Net — or no access at all. They’ve already tested out one possible delivery system with the Project Loon balloons, though some of those have caused a bit of a stir. A test flight that floated off course a couple of years back in Kentucky had residents thinking that a UFO was circling Pike county.
They’re also considering the use of solar drones to provide access. Just last month Google acquired Titan Aerospace, who created the world’s first “solar-powered atmospheric satellite,” for $20 million. The drones are capable of remaining aloft for five months at a time and Google believes it could deliver Internet access at speeds up to 1Gbps to areas that they circle.
As for this new satellite initiative, it’s reportedly going to cost Google around $3 billion to execute. Each of the 180 satellites will weigh about 250 pounds, so these aren’t Cubesats they’re building. That’s too bad, because it’d give Google a way to re-use all the Nexus One handsets they probably have lying around the Mountain View campus.
Once deployed, the satellites will help ensure that billions of people in all corners of the globe will be able to generate analytics data and pump additional dollars into Google’s advertising coffers. That’s the real goal, of course, and it’s the same reason Facebook is also trying to deliver Internet access to underserved Earthlings.
CubeSats and NanoSatellites are low earth orbit (LEO) satellites, around 600 km above earth. Due to the small size of these satellites, consuming radio communication links cannot be used. In order to solve this constraint, Syrlinks is developing a high performance, high data rate, low power consumption and small size transmitter in X-band (8GHz) for telemetry downloading.
The use of an X band transmitter significantyl increases the downlink capacity of the payload telemetry subsystem. With a bit rate commutation operated in time splitting or versus predicted Eb/N0 during a pass, up to 13.3 GB per pass can be downloaded on a 5 m station or 5,8 GB per pass on a 3,4 m station.
The equipment operates in the 8025/8450 MHz frequency range with a 1MHz step. It exhibits a data rate up to 50 Mbps (100 Mbps in specific case). The RF output power is selectable from 30 to 33 dBm with 1-dB step which can be programmable in flight (option). The equipment was designed for missions of 2 year-lifetime at Low Earth Orbit (LEO).
APPLICATIONS
- High DataRate TeleMetry - Up to 100 Mbps
- 2 years life-time LEO missions
- Observation & Scientific payloads
BENEFITS & KEY FEATURES
- Qualified COTS design
- Faster, Cheaper, Lighter
- Miniature (24mm + cubesat compliant)
- Link budget optimisation, by in-flight configuration
- Option: S band TT&C receiver
- Export licence free (Worldwide ITAR Free)
- Low consumption
QUALITY & RELIABILITY
- Radiation tested & hardened
- Functional, Mechanical, Thermal Tests
- Smart protections against SEL
- Flight heritage:
- - GOMX-3, ESA/Gomspace (Ongoing Summer 2015)
- - EYE-SAT, CNES (Ongoing)
- - OPS-SAT, ESA/TU-Graz (Ongoing)
- - Based on EWC28 - X band Tx inflight proven: Proba-V (ESA), KENT (BST & NUS),...
