Space Applications Centre

Communication and Navigation Applications
SATCOM Applications

Most of us are touched by satellite communication in more ways than we realise. Satellite communication (SATCOM) offers some unique benefits like, ubiquitous coverage, serving far flung areas, anywhere connectivity etc. In the past two and a half decades Indian National Satellite (INSAT) and GSAT systems have revolutionized the country's telecommunications, TV broadcasting, DTH services, business communications, rural area connectivity etc. The satellite communication technology has matured substantially over past three decades and is being used on commercial basis for a large number of applications.

In SATCOM Applications, currently the thrust areas are satellite based tele-education, tele-medicine, Village Resource Centres, wide-band services. In near future, Broadband Internet and similar VSAT applications will be provided using Multi Spot beam high power, high throughput satellites using Ku/Ka frequency, bands.

Tele-education project is focused on spreading satellite based distance education to entire country at school, college and university level. Tele-medicine is providing very valuable support to rural health services by enabling Super-Specialty doctor's services to remote areas.

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Mobile Satellite Services-MSS in India has been of utmost importance for national disaster management and for strategic application needs. One-way text message and position reporting applications have been operationalized and are being extensively used. The same system has been upgraded for two-way data communication as well. High power multi beam S -band satellites have paved way for miniaturized terminals for popular MSS applications.

SAC has developed different handheld and portable terminals with Unified IP based Hub to support different S-band communication services in near future. Satellite based services like two-way voice & multimedia communication, position reporting and broadcast to handheld terminals have been successfully demonstrated. They operationalisation is planned for near future.

In 2008, ISRO had set up a Satcom based broadband Virtual Private Network (VPN) for disaster management support. The network is operational in Ext-C band on GSAT-12 satellite.

The present network has nine Primary Nodes supporting up to 2.5 Mbps and 33 User nodes supporting up to 825 Kbps data rates. It is a Point to Point n/w supporting Video Conference, IP data communication and telephony(DMS). This network was effectively utilized during disasters in Uttarakhand and Jammu & Kashmir.