Extend Leo Downlinks With Geo Satellites . V. Sambasiva Rao Department of Electronics & Communication Engineering PES University, Bengaluru-560085 Microwaves & RF, pp 52-56, December 2016

L ow-Earth-orbit (LEO) satellites fly at different heights above Earth and can vary in the amount of time they are visible to a ground station (GS) to transferring data to and from the GS. For a typical LEO satellite in orbit 600 km above Earth, visibility to a GS may be less than 20 minutes per orbit, limiting the amount of data that can be exchanged. By recruiting a geosynchronous-Earth-orbit (GEO) satellite as part of the overall data link, however, it can be possible to increase the available LEO satellite datatransmission time (and amount of data).