By Sean McClinton
Henry Ford used to say of the Model T ‘You can have any color you want, as long as it’s black.’ While we believe standardization will play a vital role in the interfaces and interoperability of the space industry, one size does not always fit all. Satellite operators have an expanding and diverse customer base. Satellite operators should seek a ground station network solution that can be flexible to the needs of your end customers.
To meet the needs of an ever-expanding variety and number of spacecrafts, a flexible ground station network is needed. This month we will look at the characteristics of flexibility needed for today’s spacecraft and supporting ground stations. Those characteristics include flexibility in band, location, processing, antenna size, business model, and data.
Many of the characteristics of flexibility have to do with the amount and type of data you need to bring down from your spacecraft. Often, that can change throughout the life of the spacecraft, mission, and constellation. Early in a mission, UHF (Ultra High Frequency) may work best for communicating with your spacecraft while you are trying to acquire it post-launch and getting it into a healthy operating condition. When you start looking at bringing more data down as your mission matures, bands like S & X will allow you to do that. Having a network that can scale and shift as your data needs do allows you to move more quickly. Another aspect of increased data downloads is location. Having only a single downlink point can limit the amount of data you can bring down. Polar locations are an excellent addition to a ground solution for sun-synchronous orbits, but still require around 90 minutes (about 1 and a half hours) between each pass, with only about 10 minutes of downlink time. Having multiple downlink points allows more total downlink time and can lower overall latency. Antenna size also plays a key role because different missions require different gain. While you may get away with a smaller antenna for a LEO (Low Earth Orbit) mission, a CIS-lunar mission will require a larger antenna aperture. How and where you process and distribute your data upon receiving it at the ground station can have both cost and quality implications. Backhaul from remote locations can come with significant additional cost, so being able to process data at the terrestrial edge can help significantly. Power and storage limitations onboard the spacecraft may require terrestrial edge processing to get the most value out of your data. Data at the edge can also be routed to the cloud or processed in an appliance first.
Other factors that require flexibility beyond data are having schedule and business model flexibility. Whether you are using your own ground station or a provider, having redundancy or backup options can prove valuable if a planned ground station is not available to bring down your data. From a business model standpoint, one size does not fit all. If the amount of data you need to bring down changes over time, having a network that can scale both up and down with your needs to conserve costs will be important.
A ground station network should be like a Swiss Army knife, providing anything you might need for any potential situation, both ones you expect and ones you do not expect. At RBC Signals, we believe the future is about heterogenous networks and flexibility, as opposed to a one size fits all network. Your ground station provider shouldn’t be forcing you to conform to what’s best for them, but instead should be adapting to what’s best for you and your customers.