While all eyes may be on LEO, the real story is about high-throughput satellites (HTS) and VHTS flying in GEO, MEO and LEO.
Since the first HTS satellite, IPSTAR, was launched in 2005, the frequency-sharing, multi-beam architecture it pioneered has become standard in LEO and MEO SATCOM. Intelsat’s decision to launch its EPIC Ku-band HTS satellites made clear that it would become common in GEO as well.
Then came the very high-throughput birds Jupiter 3 with its 500 Gbps and ViaSat 3 with its terabit of capacity (sharply degraded on the first satellite by an antenna problem).
All of this has stacked up challenges for the ground segment. Hub infrastructure must scale to support hundreds of beams, support dynamic allocation of return channels and waveform optimization, handle higher symbol rates and greater throughput.
Advanced network management will be needed to handle multi-orbit, multi-beam, multi-satellite handovers. In this report, teleport and technology executives report on the technical, operational and business challenges they face and the paths they are navigating to achieve profitable growth while meeting new needs.
This World Teleport Association (WTA) report is sponsored by Kratos. Like all WTA research reports, Ground Segment for the VHTS Generation will be free for WTA Members and available for purchase by others.