Mobile Satellite Communications (Artech House Telecommunications Library.)

This is the first book solely devoted to examining the advanced systems that allow callers to make successful satellite links from moving vehicles on the ground, sea, or in the air. It examines the history of mobile satellite communications as well as their key technologies, offering a complete discussion of mobile satellite orbital dynamics.

The authors take an easy-to-understand approach to the satellite position determination principle, and provide a compact, practical procedure for making orbit calculations. They explore vehicle antennas, their requirements, gain, beam width, phased arrays, and satellite tracking, and discuss signal propagation problems and counter methods in marine, aeronautical and land environments. The book also looks ahead to forthcoming technologies, including satellite phone systems using both geostationary and non-geostationary orbits.