Combating sun outage in satellite television distribution systems

Two methods of sun outage avoidance in satellite television transmission are discussed. Each method requires two satellites and dual-beam antennas. The two C-band satellites transmit identical programs at the time when the sun outage period occurs. The separation of the spacecraft is dependent on the dual-feed earth station antenna size. For large television receive-only antennas, the separation must be small; for small antennas, or antennas with large beamwidths, the satellite separation can be large. If the separation is larger than 8° on the geosynchronous arc, only one transmit station is required to transmit program information. Scaling this system for Ku-band use is then considered. It is concluded that in a Ku-band direct-broadcasting system with earth station antenna diameters of 1-m and below, the rise in noise temperature due to sun outage is not significant and can be overcome by a modest amount of system margin, equivalent to that normally provided against rain fades