I’m a little confused about how satellite communication works. My understanding is that there is a Line-of-sight wave from the user to the satellite and then a Line-of-sight wave from the satellite to the destination. I also have heard that whether a radio wave behaves like a ground wave or Line-of-sight wave depends on the frequency of the wave. It’s not intuitive to me why this is. It’s also not intuitive why we don’t communicate with ground waves. Is it because they are slower in spite of the fact that you’re substantially increasing the distance that the data has to travel?
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Ok so you have multiple things happening:
* Radio waves travel like light beams, in a straight line. So if you’re on this side of the Earth and you want to communicate with Australia on the other side of the Earth, you’ll need satellites to receive and re-transmit your radio waves.
* Radio waves are absorbed by certain materials. Dirt (the ground), water, metal objects such as skyscrapers, etc. Ideally you want to send your radio waves through the air or into space, rather than through the ground, water, or buildings.
* The [ionosphere](https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-8967a882f8c568b924096d6817b15eff-lq) outer layer of the atmosphere is ionized and reflects radio waves, a little bit like water reflects light. If you send straight up it gets through, but if you send at an angle it reflects back down to the ground.
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