Isro’s new communication satellite to usher in high-speed internet era

Gsat-11 is a 5,725-kgs heavy satellite carrying 40 transponders in the Ku and Ka-band frequencies. The Indian Space Research Organization, that is, ISRO is planning to launch this heavy-duty communication satellite and many similar ones, in the month of April or May 2018. These satellites are capable of providing a high bandwidth correspondence and steering in an age or era of high-speed internet connectivity.

While India had overtaken the USA in 2016 to become world’s second largest internet user base after China, the mobile and broadband speed ranks it out at 109 out of 122 countries and 76 out of 133, respectively. Towards the end of last year, mobile speed in the country was 8.8 Mbps and broadband was just 18.8 Mbps. Isro’s attempt is to increase the speeds exponential and bring India to the top of the race.

In 2017, the Indian space agency had launched Gsat-9, another Ka/Ku high bandwidth frequency satellite having communication transponders on June 5. The plan is to launch many more of them and to create a stable network and produce high speed internet for the whole country. These satellites, including Gsat-11 will be providing us a connectivity with upto 14 Gigabytes per second (Gbps) data transfer rate.

The scheduled plans are to launch the heavy Gsat-11 from the European spaceport and around the same time, India's GSLV Mk III rocket will be employed to launch Gsat-29 from Sriharikota in India. Thereafter, Gsat-20 will be launched in India too, sometime around in 2019.

A spot beam is a satellite signal, sent by an antenna located on the satellite, specially concentrated such that it covers only a small and limited geographic area. The power of the bean is inverse to the radius. The narrower the beam, more is it power. The satellites, launched and to be launched, are special as they use multiple spot beams, which in other words, is a special transponder operating on high frequency. These beams will be reused multiple times to cover the entire country. This is in contrast with the tradition satellites that used a single broad beam covering wide regions but not concentrated. Gsat-20 will used 40 spot beams and Gsat-19, already launched, uses 16 beams to transfer data at a rate of 13 Gbps. Gsat-20 will have two polarisers in it that will make the 40 beams as effective as 80 beams to transfer data at a pace of around 60-70 Gbps.

The launch by Isro is, however, clashing with the time when Elon Musk-founded SpaceX, a US space company, is also building the largest satellite-based internet network. Its goal is to bring low-cost internet at very high-speed to hundred millions of people. SpaceX recently launched two experimental satellites for the same, Microsat-2a and Microsat-2b. It is planning on launching an entire constellation of 800-1200 small satellites into the low-earth orbit having around 4500 bandwidth. This constellation will help start global internet services by the year 2020.

Isro’s target no longer stagnates at building up a fast internet community but also in competing with Elon Musk and SpaceX’s global internet services.