Project A: Spacecraft Design
Project Presenter: Reynolt de Vos van Steenwijk (SSTL)

This project is to design a small spacecraft for an environmental monitoring mission, forming part of a constellation of satellites. Thus, the design aim is to minimise the size, mass and complexity of each satellite so that they may fit within the limited performance envelope of the launch vehicle.

An outline design is required, concentrating on the following areas: Orbital Dynamics; Optical Systems; On-Board Data Handling; RF Link; Power Systems; Mass Budget / Volume Constraints.

Project B: Military Satellite Link Analysis
Project Presenter: Tim Tozer (University of York)

This project is essentially an exercise in simple link budgets in the context of a traditional practical military satcom scenario. These will serve to identify system capacity, and highlight some features and constraints of Milsatcoms. Part of the challenge is in identifying key parameters from an outline description, and developing an understanding of the system.

Project C: Payload Design
Project Presenter: Dave O’Connor (EADS-Astrium)

This project is to explore the outline design of a satellite communications payload with a simple transponder and the spacecraft antennas. The exercise is to choose suitable configurations to meet the specification, including mass, gain, G/T, EIRP, linearity, and reliability.

Project D: Earth Station Design
Project Presenter: Des Prouse (BT)

You are required to propose an optimum transmission system design for an earth station to satisfy the international communications requirements of a customer and choosing from a range of standard specified satellite transponders, antennas, link formats etc. This is a detailed design exercise, involving a number of trade-offs.

Project E: File Transfer over VSATs
Project Presenter: Kevin Hodson (Delta Communication)

This will explore the design of a system using TCP/IP to transfer files over a satellite according to a specification. It will involve link budgets, and choice of protocol parameters.

Project F: Design of an Aeronautical Mobile High Speed Data Link
Project Presenter: Dick Smith (INMARSAT)

The project is to develop a satcom data channel system design for Internet access at 64 kbit/s to large wide body passenger aircraft. For the purpose of this project the design should assume the use of some elements of existing passenger aircraft satcom terminals, in particular the antenna and high power transmit amplifier. The project calls for definition of systems concept, channel design, link budgets, and trade-off analysis.