Communications: Spot beams promise satellite communication breakthrough: Focused antenna beams with frequencies accessed by time division can mean higher uplink power and more powerful communication service

In satellite communications, wide-area coverage and high antenna gain are generally mutually exclusive. For wide-area coverage, the emerging technology of time division multiple access (TDMA) utilizes a satellite's resources very efficiently, but at a cost of straining today's satellite technology to improve signal gain. High antenna gain is possible using another emerging technology, spot-beam antennas, but their coverage is limited to smaller geographic areas. Now a technique has been found that uses TDMA to provide high antenna gain over a wide area of coverage. This technique is called scanning spot-beam antennas.