Look at any row of satellite dishes on a skyline and they all point to the same patch of sky. That is because the satellites they watch hover in a special orbit — the geostationary arc — and never seem to move. What Is a Geostationary Orbit? A satellite about 35,786 km above the equator,…
Satellite signals are polarised — the radio wave oscillates in a specific orientation. European satellites use linear horizontal/vertical polarisation; American ones often use circular. This is why your LNB has to be rotated. Why Polarisation Exists Two signals can share the same frequency if they are polarised differently. A horizontal channel and a vertical channel…
FEC stands for Forward Error Correction, and it is the reason digital satellite works at all. Without it, every speck of noise would ruin the picture. Here is how it helps you. The Problem FEC Solves The satellite signal arrives weak and noisy. Some bits will inevitably be corrupted by the time they reach your…
Two numbers appear on every satellite transponder: bitrate and symbol rate. They are related but different, and understanding them helps you make sense of picture quality and channel capacity. Symbol Rate The symbol rate (measured in megasymbols per second, MS/s) is how fast the transponder changes its signal. A common European value is 27500 MS/s….
EIRP sounds like jargon, but it is the single number that tells you how big a dish you need. Short for Effective Isotropic Radiated Power, it describes how strong the satellite's signal is where you live. What EIRP Means EIRP combines the satellite's transmit power and the size of its broadcast antenna into one effective…
A satellite does not broadcast “channels” in the way a TV station does. It broadcasts transponders — blocks of frequency that carry many channels at once. Understanding transponders explains how a single satellite carries hundreds of stations. What Is a Transponder? Short for “transmitter-responder”, a transponder is a channel on the satellite that receives an…
When you inspect a satellite channel's signal details, you will see “QPSK” or “8PSK”. These are modulation schemes — the way bits are encoded on the carrier. They explain why some channels need a cleaner signal than others. What Is Modulation? To send digital data over a radio wave, you vary something about the carrier…
Satellites broadcast at different microwave frequency bands. The two you will meet as a home viewer are Ku band and Ka band. They have different properties — and the choice affects dish size, weather sensitivity and the channels you can receive. Ku Band (10.7–12.75 GHz) The workhorse of home satellite TV. European consumer satellites (Astra,…
When you look at a receiver's specs you will see DVB-S, DVB-S2 and DVB-S2X. These are the three broadcast standards that have shaped satellite TV over the last three decades. Knowing the difference explains why some channels need a newer receiver. DVB-S: The Original (1995) The first digital satellite standard. Uses QPSK modulation and a…
Digital predistortion (DPD) is one of the invisible technologies that modern satellite — and 5G — depend on. If you have heard the term but are not quite sure what it does, this plain-language introduction is for you. The Problem DPD Solves To broadcast, a satellite ground station amplifies the signal to huge power before…