LEO Satellite Ground Station Design Concepts

Satellites are an important part of telecommunication infrastructure worldwide, carrying large amounts of multimedia traffic. The basic resources available for satellite communications are orbits and radio frequency spectrum. Dynamics on climate changes, remote sensing applications for oceans, different astronomic observations, ions density records in the ionosphere, and very specific humanitarian applications related to search and rescue services are some of activities carried out by low earth orbits satellites, activities that are too difficult or impossible to be implemented on Earth. The operational satellite receives the radio waves transmitted by the ground station. Ground stations are vital elements in any satellite communications network. A communication satellite system enables the communication between a satellite and one or more ground stations. In general, the total antenna noise power will be made up by the various sources whose temperature will vary with the space angle of observation.