A Domestic Satellite Design

This paper deals with the design parameters of a communications satellite which would be capable of providing domestic telephony, data, and television distribution services. Certain important aspects of the design are discussed, including satellite antenna beam coverage, transponder bandwidth, and transponder radiated power for a given weight range. A baseline satellite design is then presented which has 24 transponders (with 4000 watts radiated power on-axis and 34-MHz radio-frequency bandwidth) fully accessible from the 48 contiguous United States. The design uses crossed linear polarization to reuse the satellite transmit and receive frequency spectrum.