Advanced Communications Technology Satellite for a Differential GlobalPositioning System

摘要

The Advanced Communications Technology Satellite (ACTS) is an experimentaltelecommunications satellite which is being built for NASA and is scheduled to be launched in July 1993. The satellite will act as a test bed for high gain hopping spot beams, on-board processing, and Ka-band technologies. The incorporation of these technologies provides it with many different capabilities, including the ability to transmit digital data with a data latency of less than one second at rates up to hundreds of megabits per second. NASA has developed a user-based experiments program to demonstrate the capabilities of the satellite. Experimenters have the opportunity to evaluate the potential of ACTS technologies to meet their communications needs. The U.S. Army Topographic Engineering Center (TEC) will be using the ACTS for transmitting Differential Global Positioning System (DGPS) data to test for its use with meter and decimeter level applications in real time. The ACTS satellite communications has the capacity to transmit additional data, such as digital mapping data, with DGPS data in real time. Experimental telecommunications satellite, High gain spot beams, On-board processing, Ka-band, DGPS.