Earth Station

Earth Station
Definition: Earth Station also known as the ground station is an

arrangement of various equipment on the surface or atmosphere of the
earth that is used to transmit or receive signals in the form of voice, video,
or data through single or multiple satellites. It is sometimes called the earth
terminal and is a part of the ground segment of the satellite network.
The earth station is an earth-based terminal that can be present on a ship
or an aircraft as well. The earth station is not a single equipment entity as
various major elements constitute it. It is to be noted here that the design of
the earth station depends on requirements as well as the quality of service.
Types of Earth Station

The earth station is a crucial part of satellite communication because one
earth station transmits the signal and another earth station receives it.
The three major categories in which an earth station is divided are as

follows:
 Transmit type: This type of earth station is the one that is only designed
to transmit the signals towards the satellite and has no arrangement of
signal reception.
 Receive type: The type of earth station that simply performs the
function of reception of signals coming from satellite and cannot transmit
the signal to the satellite in space is known as receive type earth station.
 Transmit-Receive type: The earth station unit that solely handles two-
way communication i.e., sends the signal to the satellite and also
receives the signal coming from the satellite is known as transmit-
receive type earth station.
Block Diagram of Earth Station
The design and layout of the earth station are not that critical but are
crucial. The reason for this is that the designing must be done in a
focussed way so that the station must be able to receive even very weak
signals as well as process them to get the actual information. So, designing
the earth station is an important considerable factor.
 It is to be noted here that the earth station should maintain the required
signal quality and its design must be cost-effective and reliable.
The whole unit of the earth station is divided into two parts, one is the RF
terminal and the other is the baseband terminal. The RF terminal includes
an antenna, upconverter, downconverter, high power amplifier, and low
noise amplifier. While the baseband terminal includes, encoder, decoder,
modulator, and demodulator. However, these two parts are separated by a
sufficient distance and are connected via IF lines. The RF terminal must be
present close to the antenna unit to reduce the losses and attenuation due
to the transmission line that connects the antenna with the RF equipment.
The figure below represents the block diagram representation of the

transmit-receive type earth station:
The fundamental operation of the earth station during transmission is to

receive the signal coming from the terrestrial network and multiplex them
together to link them to the satellite in order to transmit. While during
the reception, it must receive the signals coming from the satellite and
route it to the respective destination with the help of a terrestrial network.
Initially, the received baseband or message signal from the source is
modulated with an appropriate carrier signal then it is upconverted to the
desired frequency level. The achieved signal is then amplified and
transmitted via antenna through feed system. However, the signal coming
from the satellite is received by the receiving antenna and is provided to the
feed system where required polarization is introduced. Also, the feed
system maintains isolation between transmitted and received signals so as
to reduce the chances of signal mixing.
So, the signal received by the feed system is fed to a low noise amplifier
then is down-converted to the IF range and further demodulated and
provided to the terrestrial network.
In the block diagram, we have seen units of the tracking system and drive
motors. The tracking system keeps the track record of the satellite in
space and is controlled by drive motors and the power supply.
The antenna unit mostly used in earth stations is reflector antenna, more
specifically parabolic reflector, due to the reason that these offer high gain
and low sidelobe characteristics.

Earth Station

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Earth Station

Definition: Earth Station also known as the ground station is an

Types of Earth Station

The three major categories in which an earth station is divided are as

Block Diagram of Earth Station

The figure below represents the block diagram representation of the

The fundamental operation of the earth station during transmission is to

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