Regenerative communication payload for rural development and tele-education in India

A satellite based system is needed to cover various components of rural development programmes such as eradication of illiteracy, health, hygiene, animal husbandry, agriculture practices and environmental protection. Guided with these views a dedicated satellite called GramSat is being planned for rural development and tele-education in India. It is desirable that system should provide the single hop interconnectivity through the satellite. It is required that interactive training programmes is available to the user. Considering these exclusive features for the space segment, a spot beam based Ku-band dedicated satellite, VSAT (very small aperture terminal) with talk-back facility for direct reception is being conceived. The GramSat program will have the following components: a space segment; ground terminals; network control; software production and training; and feedback analysis. The space segment is discussed including the special feature of ground terminal. The paper is based on the concept of satellite based rural development, tele-education and the related hardware