This paper discusses the design of, and experiments with, the ACTS Broadband Aeronautical Terminal. As part of the ongoing effort to investigate commercial applications of ACTS technologies, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and various industry/government partners are developing a broadband mobile terminal for aeronautical applications. The ACTS Broadband Aeronautical Terminal is designed to explore the use of K/Ka-band for high data rate aeronautical satellite communications. Currently available commercial aeronautical satellite communications systems are only capable of achieving data rates on the order of tens of kilobits per second. The broadband terminal used in conjunction with the ACTS mechanically steerable antenna, can achieve data rates of 384 kilobits per second, while use of an ACTS spot beam antenna with this terminal will allow up to T1 data rates (1.544 megabits per second). The aeronautical terminal will be utilized to test a variety of applications that require a high data rate communications link. The use of the K/Ka-band for wideband aeronautical communications has the advantages of spectrum availability and smaller antennas, while eliminating the one major drawback of this frequency band, rain attenuation, by flying above the clouds the majority of the time.


    Access

    Access via TIB

    Check availability in my library


    Export, share and cite



    Title :

    ACTS broadband aeronautical terminal


    Contributors:


    Publication date :

    1995-01-01


    Type of media :

    Conference paper


    Type of material :

    No indication


    Language :

    English




    ACTS Broadband Aeronautical Terminal

    Agan, Martin J. | NTRS | 1995



    ACTS broadband aeronautical experiment

    Abbe, Brian S. / Jedrey, Thomas C. / Estabrook, Polly et al. | NTRS | 1993


    ACTS Broadband Aeronautical Experiment

    Agan, M. / Estabrook, P. / Jedrey, T. et al. | NTRS | 1993


    ACTS Broadband Aeronautical Experiment

    B. S. Abbe / T. C. Jedrey / P. Estabrook et al. | NTIS | 1993