Article Posted on : - Jul 27, 2009

A graphical image of G-SAT 11 communication satellite

BANGALORE (BNS): India has approved building its heaviest communication satellite so far for telecom services, with capacity equal to what it currently provides using 11 satellites.

The Union Cabinet approved design and development of GSAT-11, an advanced communication satellite, at a total cost of Rs500 crore. The GSAT-11 will be a high capacity, multi-beam, Ku/Ka-band satellite.

The launch of GSAT-11 will considerably augment Ku-band capacity for telecommunication services in the country. With 16 beams in Ku-band and frequency reuse factor of 4, it can provide 10 GHz effective bandwidth equivalent to about 220 transponders of 36 MHz.

India currently has 211 transponders in the 11 INSAT series satellites at their space home in the geo-synchronous transfer orbit, or GTO, some 36,000km above earth.

“This would help us address growing demand from users,” said S. Satish, spokesman for Indian Space Research Organisation, or ISRO, the country’s space agency.

ISRO will test the Ka-band technology in its forthcoming experimental satellite GSAT-4, to be launched later this year.

India aims to increase its transponder capacity to 500 during the 11th Plan, which ends in March 2012. The country plans to launch six satellites by then, some to replace its ageing satellites in orbit.