Satellite Communications Networks and Applications: Creating Next-Generation Systems in Commercial and Government Environments

February 1-4, 2010

This course provides an intensive state-of-the-art review of satellite communications networks and applications from system and service perspectives. Intended for technical, operations, and business professionals, as well as newcomers to satellite technology, the course details the fundamentals, architecture, and development of modern satellite networks, with emphasis on cutting-edge broadcast, interactive, and mobile applications. Topics include satellite and ground station principles, digital image and full-motion video for broadcast distribution using the MPEG 2 and 4, DVB-S and S2 standards, and IP Video; Internet Protocol (IP)-based data performance optimization over satellite; Ku- and Ka-band Very Small Aperture Terminals (VSATs) applied to fixed networks as well as those having location flexibility; L- and S-band; mobile satellite services and propagation (GEO and non-GEO); mobile broadcasting using Digital Audio Radio Service (DARS) systems; and advanced broadband capabilities of Ka-band satellite systems currently in use and under development. Emphasis is placed on the proper selection of requirements, technologies, and their providers (space and ground), and on the most effective ways to architect and operate the associated satellite networks.

Organized and led by satellite industry expert and consultant Bruce Elbert, president of Application Technology Strategy, Inc., the course provides fundamentals as well as a detailed review of current applications and implementations, and a unique approach to the selection and development of advanced satellite networks for use in commercial and government environments. Optimization of IP data transfer over satellite and the design of state-of-the-art direct-to-home broadcast networks are covered by DC Palter and Stephen Dulac, themselves noted innovators in these fields. The course is appropriate for engineers and managers new to the field as well as experienced professionals wishing to update and round out their understanding of current systems and solutions.

UCLA Extension has presented this highly successful short course since 1997. It is continuously updated to reflect industry state of the art and innovations in network and application development.

Course Materials
The text, The Satellite Communication Applications Handbook, Second Edition, Bruce Elbert (Artech House, 2004), and a complete set of updated lecture notes are distributed on the first day of the course. The notes are for participants only and are not for sale.

Coordinator and Lecturer
Bruce R. Elbert, MSEE, MBA, President, Application Technology Strategy, Inc., Thousand Oaks, California; and Adjunct Professor, College of Engineering, University of Wisconsin, Madison. Mr. Elbert is a recognized satellite communications expert and has been involved in the satellite and telecommunications industries for over 30 years. He founded ATSI to assist major private and public sector organizations that develop and operate cutting-edge networks using satellite and other wireless technologies and services. During 25 years with Hughes Space and Communications (now Boeing Satellite Systems), he directed communications engineering of several major satellite projects, including Palapa A, Indonesia's original satellite system; the Galaxy follow-on system; and the development of the first GEO mobile satellite system capable of serving handheld user terminals. Mr. Elbert also worked as a communications engineer for the INTELSAT system and developed link analysis tools while a radio officer in the U.S. Army. He has written seven books on telecommunications and IT, including The Satellite Communication Applications Handbook, Second Edition (Artech House, 2004); The Satellite Communication Ground Segment and Earth Station Handbook (Artech House, 2001); and Introduction to Satellite Communication, Second Edition (Artech House, 1999).

Lecturers
Stephen P. Dulac, MSEE, Director of Engineering, DIRECTV, Inc., El Segundo, California. Mr. Dulac has been with DIRECTV since 1997 in system engineering roles supporting U.S. service launches, including HDTV, local channel rebroadcasts, DVR, interactive services, and home networking. He is currently Director, Standards and Regulatory, in DIRECTV's Set-Top Box Engineering organization. During 1994-1997, he was director, Conditional Access, supporting the development and launch of the DIRECTV Latin America service. Joining Hughes Aircraft Company in 1986 as a Master's Fellow, he contributed to many company projects as it evolved into Hughes Electronics and most recently into the DIRECTV Group. At Hughes Space and Communications in 1992-1994, he was lead payload engineer for the Solidaridad system of communications satellites for Mexico. At subsidiary Hughes Communications from 1986-1991, his responsibilities included the first digital satellite link budget analyses applicable to the DIRECTV network. Mr. Dulac is a Senior Member of IEEE; co-authored a chapter on DTH Satellite Systems published in the National Association of Broadcasters Engineering Handbook, 10th Edition, 2007; holds four patents; and has written many articles on satellite technology. He also led the authoring and adoption in 2000 of the CEA/EIA-805 standard for delivering data services across HD analog component interfaces.

DC Palter, MBA, BS, President, Apposite Technologies, Inc., Los Angeles, California. Prior to co-founding Apposite Technologies (a leading manufacturer of satellite and wide-area network test and performance assessment equipment) in 2005, Mr. Palter spent 10 years as vice president at Mentat (now Packeteer), a pioneer in the development of satellite IP network acceleration products. This experience gives him a unique understanding of the issues and practical solutions involved with using IP over satellite. He also held various positions in marketing and engineering at Hughes Electronics, Honeywell, and Kobe Steel. Mr. Palter is a frequent contributor of articles on network emulation, network acceleration, and IPv6 to major networking, satellite, military, and telecommunications publications. He has lectured on computer networking at UCLA, the Pentagon, and a variety of industry conferences and seminars. He is the author of the texts, Satellites and the Internet: Challenges and Solutions (Satnews Publishers, 2003) and Colloquial Kansai Japanese (Tuttle, 2006); and is co-author of three U.S. patents in computer network acceleration and a Japanese patent in combustion technology.

Benjamin Pontano, President (retired) COMSAT Laboratories, a Division of ViaSat.

Dr. Pontano has been a pioneer and innovator in the field of satellite communications for nearly 40 years, where he developed systems, technologies and products. He recently retired as President of Comsat Laboratories (now a Division of ViaSat), a position that he held for nearly 10 years. At COMSAT, he led the development of many products including the Linkway and Linkstar VSATs and the INTELSAT 120Mbps TDMA Terminal. Dr. Pontano also served as President of Advanced Satellite Products for Lockheed Martin Global Telecommunications. Before joining COMSAT, he spent 10 years at INTELSAT in the early days of satellite communications, working on the design and implementation of their global satellite system. Dr. Pontano has published more than 50 papers in the field of satellite communications and holds patents on interference measurement and cancellation with patents pending in the area of Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) and hybrid antenna systems. He was an Adjunct Professor in telecommunications at George Washington University. He currently serves on Advisory Boards for both the University of Maryland and the University of Utah. He was honored as an outstanding Engineering Alumnus from both Carnegie Mellon University and the Penn State University. Dr. Pontano serves on the Editorial Boards for the International Journal of Satellite Communications and The Journal of Space Communications. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and is a member of Sigma Xi scientific honorary society.

UCLA Faculty Representative
Kung Yao, PhD, Professor, Department of Electrical Engineering, Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science

Daily Schedule
Monday
Principles of Communications Satellites and Networks (Elbert)

· Architecture of the space segment: GEO and non-GEO satellites and constellations, impact on coverage and quality of service

· Developing requirements for applications and services using systems engineering principles; commercial requirements for business use; government and military requirements for mission success

· Network architecture: broadcast, interactive star and mesh topologies and their application

· Information formats: speech, video, and image; the many forms of data and the associated protocols

· Introduction to satellite system design: the communications payload (antenna and repeater) and the spacecraft bus; satellite program planning (spacecraft and ground)

Engineering of Satellite Links (Elbert)

· Frequency spectrum and bandwidth: L and S band mobile links; C band, telecommunications services; X band, government applications; Ku and Ka band, telecommunications and broadcasting; millimeter wave and optical applications

· Introduction to line-of-sight propagation at microwave frequencies (1 to 30 GHz) on the space-earth path; atmospheric and ionospheric impairments; rain attenuation principles and prediction models

· Design of the satellite link: introduction to assessing microwave link performance using link budgets using available software tools

· Comparison of digital modulation and encoding techniques: QPSK, OQPSK, MSK, and GMSK; bandwidth-efficient modulation: 16QAM and 32APSK; forward error correction (FEC) using block, convolutional, concatenated, and turbo codes

Principles of Multiple Access Systems (Elbert)

· Frequency Division Multiple Access (FDMA) and Single Channel per Carrier (SCPC)

· Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) and ALOHA

· Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) using spread spectrum; hybrid modulation and multiple access techniques

· Comparison and application of multiple access systems

Tuesday
IP over Satellite (Palter)

· Principles of TCP/IP design: windowing; packet loss and retransmissions; slow start and congestion, TCP extensions

· Operation and issues of TCP/IP over satellite: bandwidth-delay product, acknowledgement and retransmissions, congestions control

· TCP/IP acceleration and optimization techniques for satellite networks: TCP acceleration, HTTP acceleration, CIFS acceleration, compression and caching, QoS

· Survey of available standards-based and proprietary optimization solutions: SCPS, XTP, commercial WAN optimization products, satellite-specific optimization products, application-specific optimization products, solution section criteria

· IP multicast versus broadcast of video and multimedia traffic: IP multicast fundamentals, multicast deployment issues, solutions for reliable multicast

Satellite Direct-to-Home Systems (Dulac)

· Overview of digital DTH developments: comparison of systems (DIRECTV, DISH, etc.); evolving features and services (local channels, DVRs, interactivity); reference DTH system architecture

· DTH architecture, high- and medium-power satellites to serve small receivers and digital set-top boxes, microelectronics evolution

· Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) standards: DVB-S concatenated Reed-Solomon and Viterbi convolutional coding, DVB-S2 BCH and LDPC concatenated block codes

· Compression and multiplexing technologies: Motion Picture Experts Group (MPEG) standards

· Requirements for video transmission networks (broadcast and cable)

· Security, conditional access and service management systems; options for achieving interactivity

Wednesday

Ground Station Basics (Elbert)

· Introduction to primary ground stations and remote user terminals

· Fixed, transportable, and mobile (on-the-move) terminals

· Integration with space segment

· Interfacing the ground segment with terrestrial networks

Interactive VSAT Data Networks (Pontano)

· Network topology and implications: the star network versus full mesh architectures, "Forward" and "Return" traffic patterns, and degrees of asymmetry

· Star networks: ALOHA, TDMA, SCPC, and CDMA variants

· Interactive two-way satellite service using the DVB Return Channel via Satellite (DVB-RCS) standard

· Paired Carrier Multiple Access (PCMA) – carrier in carrier communications

· Central ground station (hub) implementations: baseband equipment and interfaces to terrestrial networks

· Capacity planning and sizing: collecting requirements for the VSAT network; protocol support; estimating delay and response time

· Discussion and comparison of suppliers and technologies for VSATs – ViaSat, Hughes, Gilat, iDirect, COMTECH EF Data

Broadband and Multimedia Systems (Pontano)

· Broadband and multimedia for consumer, business-to-business services, and government use: characteristics, requirements for interactivity

· Ka-band spectrum suitability and availability; propagation considerations, rain attenuation, system noise temperature increase and de-polarization; typical link budgets

· On-board processing multibeam satellite design: hopping spot beams, dynamic microwave switching, on-board regeneration, on-board demux/remux, on-board circuit and packet switching, on-board and ground-based adaptive beam forming, inter-satellite links (millimeter wave and optical/laser)

Thursday
Satellite Mobile Communications at L and S bands (Elbert)

· Historical progression of mobile radio, cellular, and satellite mobile systems

· "Big LEO" mobile satellite systems: Iridium and GlobalStar

· GEO systems for satellite phone and data services: Thruaya, Inmarsat 4

· Ancillary Terrestrial Component--ATC, ICO GEO, TerreStar and SkyTerra

· Review of digital voice compression technology and performance at data rates below 4 kbps

· Modeling the L and S band propagation environment; multipath, noise, and interference; foliage and building penetration

· Digital Audio Radio and Mobile TV Services

Addressing Military and Emergency Management Requirements (Elbert)

· US Navy requirements and installations on ship

· Army and Marines use for short term and tactical requirements – global, regional and theatre; comms on the move (COTM)

· Aeronautical broadband installations – manned and unmanned

· Providers in the marketplace: TCS, Arrowhead, Datapath, Artel, et al

· Integration of SATCOM with other networks, particularly the Global Information Grid (GIG)

Satellite services in civil government - Disaster recovery and business continuity; Emergency communications: national, regional, state and local: e-com architecture and the role of satellite terminals and vehicles

Application and Business Planning Considerations (Elbert)

· Economic modeling of satellite communications systems

· Selecting the most appropriate satellite and transponder capacity; risk mitigation and avoidance as related to the space segment; source selection tactics and strategies

· Case study of a complete satellite network, based on requirements to be developed in class

For more information call the Short Course Program Office at (310) 825-3344; fax (310) 206-2815.

Dates February 1-4 (Monday through Thursday)

Time 8am-5pm (subject to adjustment after the first class meeting)

Location Room 211, UCLA Extension Building, 10995 Le Conte Avenue (adjacent to the UCLA campus), Los Angeles, California

Reg#

Course No. Engineering 881.237

Units 2.4 CEU (24 hours of instruction)

Fee $2,095, includes course materials
$100 nonrefundable; no refund after January 21, 2010; however, course fee (less $100) may be applied toward another short course enrollment.