communications satellite A communications satellite is an artificial satellite that relays and amplifies radio telecommunication signals via a transponder; it creates a communication channel between a source transmitter and a receiver at different locations on Earth ...

's transponder is the series of interconnected units that form a

communications channel A communication channel refers either to a physical transmission medium such as a wire, or to a logical connection over a multiplexed medium such as a radio channel in telecommunications and computer networking. A channel is used for informat ...

between the receiving and the transmitting antennas. It is mainly used in satellite communication to transfer the received signals. A transponder is typically composed of: * an input band-limiting device (an input

band-pass filter A band-pass filter or bandpass filter (BPF) is a device that passes frequencies within a certain range and rejects (attenuates) frequencies outside that range. Description In electronics and signal processing, a filter is usually a two-port ...

), * an input

low-noise amplifier A low-noise amplifier (LNA) is an electronic amplifier that amplifies a very low-power signal without significantly degrading its signal-to-noise ratio. An amplifier will increase the power of both the signal and the noise present at its input, ...

(LNA), designed to amplify the signals received from the Earth station (normally very weak, because of the large distances involved), * a frequency translator (normally composed of an oscillator and a

frequency mixer In electronics, a mixer, or frequency mixer, is an electrical circuit that creates new frequencies from two signals applied to it. In its most common application, two signals are applied to a mixer, and it produces new signals at the sum and di ...

) used to convert the frequency of the received signal to the frequency required for the transmitted signal, * an output

, * a power amplifier (this can be a

traveling-wave tube A traveling-wave tube (TWT, pronounced "twit") or traveling-wave tube amplifier (TWTA, pronounced "tweeta") is a specialized vacuum tube that is used in electronics to amplify radio frequency (RF) signals in the microwave range. The TWT belongs t ...

or a solid-state amplifier). Most communication satellites are

radio relay Radio stations that cannot communicate directly due to distance, terrain or other difficulties sometimes use an intermediate radio relay station to relay the signals. A radio relay receives weak signals and retransmits them, often in a different di ...

stations in orbit and carry dozens of transponders, each with a

bandwidth Bandwidth commonly refers to: * Bandwidth (signal processing) or ''analog bandwidth'', ''frequency bandwidth'', or ''radio bandwidth'', a measure of the width of a frequency range * Bandwidth (computing), the rate of data transfer, bit rate or thr ...

of tens of megahertz. Most transponders operate on a (i.e., u-bend) principle, sending back to Earth what goes into the conduit with only amplification and a shift from

uplink In a telecommunications network, a link is a communication channel that connects two or more devices for the purpose of data transmission. The link may be a dedicated physical link or a virtual circuit that uses one or more physical links or sha ...

to downlink frequency. However, some modern satellites use on-board processing, where the signal is demodulated, decoded, re-encoded and modulated aboard the satellite. This type, called a "regenerative" transponder, is more complex, but has many advantages, such as improving the signal to noise ratio as the signal is regenerated from the digital domain, and also permits selective processing of the data in the digital domain. With

data compression In information theory, data compression, source coding, or bit-rate reduction is the process of encoding information using fewer bits than the original representation. Any particular compression is either lossy or lossless. Lossless compressio ...

and multiplexing, several

video Video is an electronic medium for the recording, copying, playback, broadcasting, and display of moving visual media. Video was first developed for mechanical television systems, which were quickly replaced by cathode-ray tube (CRT) syst ...

(including digital video) and

audio Audio most commonly refers to sound, as it is transmitted in signal form. It may also refer to: Sound * Audio signal, an electrical representation of sound *Audio frequency, a frequency in the audio spectrum * Digital audio, representation of sou ...

channels may travel through a single transponder on a single

wideband In communications, a system is wideband when the message bandwidth significantly exceeds the coherence bandwidth of the channel. Some communication links have such a high data rate that they are forced to use a wide bandwidth; other links ma ...

carrier. Original

analog video Video is an electronic medium for the recording, copying Copying is the duplication of information or an artifact based on an instance of that information or artifact, and not using the process that originally generated it. With analog f ...

only had one channel per transponder, with subcarriers for audio and automatic transmission-identification service ATIS. Non-multiplexed

radio station Radio broadcasting is transmission of audio (sound), sometimes with related metadata, by radio waves to radio receivers belonging to a public audience. In terrestrial radio broadcasting the radio waves are broadcast by a land-based radi ...

s can also travel in

single channel per carrier Single channel per carrier (SCPC) refers to using a single signal at a given frequency and bandwidth. Most often, this is used on broadcast satellites to indicate that radio stations are not multiplexed as subcarriers onto a single video carrier ...

(SCPC) mode, with multiple carriers (analog or digital) per transponder. This allows each station to transmit directly to the satellite, rather than paying for a whole transponder or using

landline A landline (land line, land-line, main line, home phone, fixed-line, and wireline) is a telephone connection that uses metal wires or optical fiber telephone line for transmission, as distinguished from a mobile cellular network, which uses ...

s to send it to an

Earth station A ground station, Earth station, or Earth terminal is a terrestrial radio station designed for extraplanetary telecommunication with spacecraft (constituting part of the ground segment of the spacecraft system), or reception of radio waves fr ...

for multiplexing with other stations. NASA distinguishes between a "

transceiver In radio communication, a transceiver is an electronic device which is a combination of a radio ''trans''mitter and a re''ceiver'', hence the name. It can both transmit and receive radio waves using an antenna, for communication purposes. Thes ...

" and "transponder". A transceiver has an independent transmitter and receiver packaged in the same unit. In a transponder the transmit

carrier frequency In telecommunications, a carrier wave, carrier signal, or just carrier, is a waveform (usually sinusoidal) that is modulated (modified) with an information-bearing signal for the purpose of conveying information. This carrier wave usually has a ...

is derived from the received signal. The frequency linkage allows an interrogating ground station to recover the Doppler shift and thus infer range and speed from a communication signal without allocating power to a separate ranging signal.Space Network Users Guide
.

Transponder equivalent

A transponder equivalent (TPE) is a normalized way to refer to transponder bandwidth. It simply means how many transponders would be used if the same total bandwidths used only 36 MHz transponders. So, for example, the

ARSAT-1 ARSAT-1 is a geostationary communications satellite operated by AR-SAT and built by the Argentine company INVAP. ARSAT-1 was launched into orbit on October 16, 2014, from French Guiana alongside Intelsat-30 satellite using an Ariane 5 rocket. It ...

has 24 IEEE K_u band transponders: 12 with a bandwidth of 36 MHz, 8 with 54 MHz, and 4 with 72 MHz, which totals to 1152 MHz, or 32 TPE (i.e., 1152 MHz divided by 36 MHz).

References

{{Satcomm Communications satellites Satellite broadcasting Radio electronics