This section seeks to find the core of the problem to be solved.
To do this a list of specs for downlinks needs to be specified.
This list includes but is not limited to:
- Latency
- Throughput
- Price
- Resilience
- Convenience?
- Power?
First a traditional downlink is considered in: Specs of traditional downlink
Then an alternative downlink is considered in: Specs of new downlink
Preliminary conclusions
Some preliminary conclusions:
Latency
From the estimations made it can be seen that the new downlink theoretically has multiple advantages. The latency of the new downlink is in many cases much lower than that of the old downlink.
Throughput
The throughput of the new downlink is lower than the traditional downlink when the ground station has line of sight with the satellite. But as the satellite spends most of it’s time not over the ground station the amount of data which can be downlinked per second is higher for the new downlink.
Price
Commercial prices for similar products to the new downlink has been found which would be around 10 000$ per month.
Commercial prices for similar products to the traditional downlink has not been found yet.
Resilience
Summary
Latency is the metric where this new downlink can make a big difference, as improvements of orders of magnitude are possible. Throughput can also be improved.
Stakeholders
A preliminary list of stakeholders in this space is composed in the list of Stakeholders. This list also includes a crude list of possible customers of the new downlink.