System and method for high throughput fractionated satellites (HTFS) for direct connectivity to and from end user devices and terminals using flight formations of small or very small satellites
A high throughput fractionated satellite (HTFS) system and method where the functional capabilities of a conventional monolithic spacecraft are distributed across many small or very small satellites and a central command and relay satellite, the satellites are separated and flight in carefully design formations that allows the creation of very large aperture or apertures in space drastically reducing cost and weight and enabling high throughput capabilities by spatially reuse spectrum.
1. A communication system comprising:
a ground station for transmitting and receiving signals to and from a satellite or satellite formation, said ground station configured to apply an inverse Doppler to cancel Doppler effect on the signals to provide an equalized near-zero Doppler, wherein the satellite or satellite formation corresponds to a plurality of beams each pre-compensated to the center of the beam and has an aperture adjusted to such a large size that pre-compensated residual Doppler and delay variations at off-center locations in each beam with respect to the center of the beam are within long-term-evolution (LTE) and other 3GPP standards.
2. The communication system of claim 1 , wherein the signals having a path delay, said ground station further configured to apply a variable delay based on the path delay to provide an equalized final constant path delay for the signals.
3. The system of claim 2 , wherein the overall delay induced by the ground station at each beam-center is a constant.
4. The system of claim 1 , said ground station configured to provide a delayed-transmission communication protocol to account for communication delay between said ground station and the satellite or satellite formation.
5. The system of claim 1 , said satellite or satellite formation configured to provide a delayed-transmission communication protocol to account for communication delay between said satellite or satellite formation and said ground station and/or ground user devices.
6. The system of claim 1 , wherein said ground station forms a beam with the satellite or satellite formation, wherein the beam is pre-compensated based on satellite ephemeris and beam-center latitude-longitude, for Doppler frequency shift induced by the satellite or satellite formation.
7. The system of claim 1 , said ground station forming a beam with the satellite or satellite formation, wherein the beam is pre-compensated based on satellite ephemeris and beam-center latitude-longitude, for Doppler frequency shift induced by the satellite or satellite formation.
8. The system of claim 7 , further comprising a plurality of virtual base-stations and a down converter receiving a composite signal from the satellite or satellite formation and providing a down-converted signal.
9. The system of claim 8 , further comprising a demultiplexer receiving the down-converted signal and providing a demultiplexed down-converted signal to each of the plurality of virtual base-stations.
10. The system of claim 1 , further comprising a plurality of virtual base-stations and a frequency division multiplexer receiving a signal from each of said plurality of virtual base-stations to form a composite signal.
11. The system of claim 10 , further comprising an up converter receiving the composite signal from said frequency division multiplexer and transmitting an up-converted composite signal to the satellite or satellite formation.
12. The system of claim 1 , wherein the aperture is adjusted to have such a large size that the pre-compensated residual Doppler at off-center locations in each beam with respect to the center of the beam is within 1200 Hz.
13. The system of claim 1 , wherein the aperture is adjusted to have such a large size that the pre-compensated delay variations at off-center locations in each beam with respect to the center of the beam are within 0.1 ms.