Satellite connectivity

Skills: none

IT concepts: geostationary orbit, low-earth orbit, satellite footprint, applications, latency (ping time)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.

Where does this topic fit?

• Internet concepts– Applications– Technology (communication)– Implications

• Internet skills– Application development– Content creation (images)

Satellite is slow and expensive, but may be the only possibility

This dish will probably serve a village or rural Internet kiosk.

Geostationary orbit about 22,000 miles

Low earth orbit about 500 miles

100 minutes

24 hours

A geostationary orbit for Internet connectivity

1945: Arthur C. Clarke’s geostationary satellite

Fig. 2. Typical extra-terrestrial relay services. Transmission from A being relayed to point B and area C; transmission from D being relayed to whole hemisphere.

Satellite footprint

Satellite latency

Radius of the earth is approximately 4,000 miles

22,000-4,000 = 18,000

2 X 18,000 = 36,000

Light travels 186,000 miles per second

36,000/186,000 = 193 milliseconds

Low earth orbit (LEO) satellite constellations

Animation

Teledesic

Animation

GPS

Iridium

Satellite connectivity

Skills: none

IT concepts: geostationary orbit, low-earth orbit, satellite footprint, applications, latency (ping time)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.