System design of a Q-band satellite beacon for propagation experiments over Indian region

This paper presents the system dimensioning of a Q-band downlink satellite beacon providing coverage over the Indian region. The paper addresses the tradeoff analysis associated in the design process to meet the conflicting requirements of optimization of payload mass/power, beacon availability and user terminal size. The design is optimized to facilitate the collection of propagation data over diverse geographical regions using small ground terminals (~1m) with an average availability about 99.5%.