The Advanced Communications Technology Satellite for a Differential Global Positioning System

Andrew S. Austin, Sally L. Frodge, Mark Plecity, Roger P. Dendy

Abstract:	The Advanced Communications Technology Satellite (ACTS) is an experimental telecommunications satellite which is being built for NASA and is scheduled to be launched in July 1993. The satellite will act as a test bed for high gain hopping spot beams, on-board processing, and Ka-band technologies. The incorporation of these technologies provides it with many different capabilities, including the ability to transmit digital data with a data latency of less than one second at rates up to hundreds of megabits per second. NASA has developed a user-based experiments program to demonstrate the capabilities of the satellite. Experimenters have the opportunity to evaluate the potential of ACTS technologies to meet their communications needs. The U.S. Army Topographic Engineering Center (TEC) will be using the ACTS for transmitting Differential Global Positioning System (DGPS) data to test for its use with meter and decimeter level applications in real time. The ACTS satellite communications has the capacity to transmit additional data, such as digital mapping data, with DGPS data in real time. This paper describes the advanced technologies of ACTS, and the potential benefits of these technologies for future satellite communications. It describes the various earth station types that have been developed to support experimentation with ACTS. This paper also describes the ACTS Experiments Program and the various experiments and experimenters participating in the program to use the ACTS. Specifically, the three phase experiment with DGPS will be discussed. Phase one is to conduct the experiment over a baseline of 320 km in static mode; phase two is to utilize the sled track at the Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico to conduct a controlled kinematic test; and phase three will be a kinematic test on board a mobile platform.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 1993 National Technical Meeting of The Institute of Navigation January 20 - 22, 1993 Parc 55 Hotel San Francisco, CA
Pages:	389 - 397
Cite this article:	Austin, Andrew S., Frodge, Sally L., Plecity, Mark, Dendy, Roger P., "The Advanced Communications Technology Satellite for a Differential Global Positioning System," Proceedings of the 1993 National Technical Meeting of The Institute of Navigation, San Francisco, CA, January 1993, pp. 389-397.
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