The demand for communications satellites continues to appear stable, with some new starts and expected orders for replacements of the aging satellites launched in the nineties, but the future may see an increase in demand.
This seems likely due to the growth of the Directway subscriber base, the launch of service by Wildblue, the launch of IpStar, Wild Blue 1, the military Wideband Gapfiller, and the US mandate to convert to High Definition Television broadcasts These services will benefit from expected lower cost and higher functionality of new ground terminals featuring significant improvements in coding, higher order modulation, creation of IP networks with QoS for both Star and Mesh topologies, and higher levels of integration.
Several new applications geared to mobility are creating new markets for which satellites are uniquely qualified, and presage a new era of broadband services to aircraft, such as the internet services offered by Connexion by Boeing and the live television broadcasts by Directv.
The advent of the Galileo project is expected to provide the impetus for a new look at satellite-aided navigation and related communications to improve the management of aircraft in flight, to reduce congestion and to increase the efficiency of travel by using the most direct route.
Refinements in propagation modeling, real time weather information for fade mitigation, and efforts on architectures and protocols offer novel approaches to better utilize the available spectrum and maximize satellite throughput.
In view of the above developments, the Ka and Broadband Conference is soliciting papers that highlight broadband and mobile communications, satellite-aided navigation, and the traditional applications in Ka Band for the following sessions:
Satellite-Aided Navigation
Mobile Broadband Services
New and Updated Ka Band Flight Systems
Military Application and Systems
Ka Band Ground Systems
Advances in Ka Band Components
Experimental Ka Band Results
Satellite Architectures
Communications Protocols
Ka Band Propagation and Fade Mitigation
Marketing
Regulatory Issues
The Conference will also host the Fourth BroadSky Workshop organized in cooperation with NICT, the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology of Japan.
