A new propagation campaign in tropical areas: The Ka-band propagation experiment over India with the GSAT-4 satellite

An opportunity has been proposed recently by the Space Applications Center (SAC) of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) to carry out a propagation experiment at Ka-band over India. To this purpose, the GSAT-4 satellite will board two propagation beacons at 20.2 GHz and 30.5 GHz in linear polarization. The objective of this paper is to present the GSAT-4 propagation experiment. In a first part, the main objectives of the campaign are described. Afterwards, a presentation of the specifications of the propagation beacons to be boarded on GSAT-4 are given. Finally, the ground segment with all instruments planned to be distributed over India during the campaign are detailed and illustrated with an example of link budget.