I was looking for the kind of internet speeds that are possible via satellites. GEO satellites tend to have very high latency and LEO constellations like Iridium and Globalstar have lower latencies but their throughput is lesser than ground-based broadband internet. What are the technical reasons that make broadband internet user-speeds difficult to achieve via satellites?
In: Technology
It’s mainly the frequency at which the signal travels. There are a limited number of frequency bands available and due to size and power requirements for faster speeds, it becomes a bit impractical, plus higher frequency bands are more susceptible to interference.
Let’s say right now that the satellite uses the Ka 26.5-40Ghz frequency band. Thay means theoretically it can spend a max of 26.5-40Gbps. But of course in practically you never get ideal rates because you need to maintain packet integrity (ie data correction). And this gets worse with interference since one side has to constantly repeat itself a lot. And of course you have to share the total bandwidth with all the other users in the same area too. So then your 40Gbps max is probably down to 500Mbps or less.
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