Teledesic Broadband Global Network
Teledesic
Company shareholders
Commercial service
To be operational approx 2001.
Ka-Band LEO satellite constellation (each satellite about 800 kg). 36 KW transmitter designed for 70% of satellites to last 10 years.
700 km polar orbit (435 miles above the earth's surface) with a high elevation angle of 40 deg. 21 planes of 40 satellites (840 in total) with 84 in-orbit spares (i.e. 15 satellites over continental US at any one time). Each satellite will have a lightweight solar panel measurinbg 40ft.
Frequency Cell Scanning (576 cells from each satellite, grouped into 64 super cells). The complete constellation will cover 20,000 cells on the surface of the earth. Each satellite contains a fast packet switch.
Three services with a RTT < 150 ms and a BER < 10-10.
Standard 16 kbps to 2 Mbps (16cm - 1.8m)
Gateway 512 kbps to 1.2 Gbps (upto 16 per satellite using site diversity)
Mobile (same as standard with 10 cm antenna)
There are 20,000 super cells covering the earth's service each with 9 Ka-Band frequencies. The cell grid remains fixed as the satellites pass overhead. 8 Inter-satellite links will operate at 60 GHz.
B-ISDN (In the satellite network, cells will be 152 bits)
Proposed
?
No frequency band yet allocated within the US. The proposal to launch 8 satellites at a time will require 116 launches!
See also the competing system from Hughes