The complexity of spacecraft operations has sky-rocketed with increased orbital activity and new satellite capabilities, like the ability to reconfigure capacity, power, and coverage on demand. Despite these advances, satellite communications (satcom) operators still find it challenging to scale and adapt to this new complexity on the ground. Limited software solutions and the lack of interoperability between hardware ground systems can make scaling on demand difficult. Virtualizing the satellite ground station with cloud technology can increase scalability, flexibility, and operational agility…….Read More https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/publicsector/virtualizing-satcom-operations-aws/
Prerequisite: Communication satellite
Communication satellites orbiting the Earth connect at least two ground stations on Earth using radio frequency (RF) links.
Step 1: Ground station antenna system
Radio signals are transmitted to the remote terminal through the satellite (forward or outbound link) and received from the remote terminal through the satellite (return or inbound link) at the ground station’s antenna system. The RF signal is down-converted to an intermediate frequency (IF) and then digitized as close as possible to the antenna, using open and simple standards, such as the Digital IF Interoperability Standard. Traditional antenna systems need a digitizer to translate between the analogue and the digital domains.
The digital data in IF over IP is transmitted using AWS Direct Connect, Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC), and AWS Client VPN between the antenna system and Step 2.