Satellite Books

This book is essential for anyone wanting to work with the Amateur Satellites. It covers the history of various projects, explains the modes of operation, and shows the equipment needed to talk with the birds. Like all the ARRL books, it is easy to follow and clearly written. The only problem I have with the book is that it hasn't been updated since 1997. It doesn't have good information on some of the newer spacecraft. As an example, it talks about the soon to be launched Phase 3D satellite rather than talking about the now orbiting AO-40 (ex Phase 3D) and some of the problems it is having. Still, the technology and techniques are very valid and good for anyone wishing to work with space communications.

In case your are thinking this is difficult to start in, I've had success transmitting to and receiving from the International Space Station using just a handheld transceiver (Kenwood TH-D7A) and either an attic mounted or handheld directional antenna. I've also heard voice from (but not transmitted to) the OSCAR 14 satellite with this same setup. You don't need an equipment setup to rival NASA in order to start with the aspect of the Amateur Radio hobby.

If you blow A balloon up and let it go it might go strate up in the air like a rocet ship. There are two space ships. One is a space shuttle and rocket. This was anisting book.

The authors cover nearly all the practical ground of the title from antennas to orbitology to video. The book mainly targets BS/MSEE engineers and is an excellent match at a general professional level. Highly experienced pros or academics may refer to it for breadth. The chapter problem sets make it a reasonable fourth year textbook. The index and lists of acronyms and symbols are better than average. Typography and graphics are outstanding.

To do this in only 550 pages (12 chapters) the authors perform a delicate trade-off between logging technical issues and delving into them. The reviewer judges it overall a wise set of trades. No real attempt is made to go into many subtopics past a thorough discussion of basic motives, mathematical relationships and key results, limitations and conventional use. "Middle ground" development and derivation may be missing or merely suggested in some cases. There is essentially no discussion of military vice commercial satcom except noting the hard-limiting transponder. Yet the reader gets a solid feel for the "lay of the land" in both theory and practice. In overall content, the book leans toward RF and physics, and away from data transmission and networking. This sets it apart from books on VSAT. Reference lists go back to classics (e.g. Nyquist in 1928) and forward to about 1991. It is an excellent complement to specialized satellite communication texts on the engineer's reference bookshelf.

Some criticisms can be argued. Topic balance is not always satisfying. For one example, two packed chapters (117 pages) present orbits to an admirable "user level" of detail. Yet only one chapter (40 pages) presents the critical topic of multiple access, and there is only one paragraph on DAMA. In another example, the digital modulations PSK, QPSK and 8-PSK are overviewed but not MSK; yet good references made to Lindsey, Proakis, et. al. Their coverage and references on forward error correction (FEC) coding is even thinner relative to other equally important topics, and in the reviewer's opinion this is one of the book's few shortfall areas holding it down to four stars. This second edition is dated 1993, and a third edition correcting some (few) errors, gaps and shortages (e.g. FEC) should be very welcome by the engineering community. It could be a five star text without rewriting most of it.

[Reviewer's Notes: I own and use this book. I am a professional telecommunication system engineer. I have no relation to the editor, author or publisher. Stars are opinionated and awarded parsimoniously. Five stars is top flight quality and relevance; such a book may not always exist in a given subject. Four is a standout among existing works. Three is solid quality and can be very useful. Two disappoint somewhat but there may be reasons to keep it. One star covers everything from finding many significant flaws to a disaster; I'll spend my time with more stars.]

This book is a useful purchase for anyone interested in (or working on) satellite communications systems. It concentrates primarily on the history and organisation of the leading national and international (e.g. Intelsat, Eutelsat etc.) satellite systems.

I found the various "case study" examples of satellite networks to be most useful and informative, particularly as this is an area that most books on satcoms tend to overlook or not address adequately.

The latter half of the book covers national satellite systems on a country-by-country basis. Although there are plenty of useful facts and figures in this section, it is inevitably starting to become a little out of date (the book was published in 1990).

This is a very good book for atmospheric science and meteorology students and researchers. It includes many topics that are very useful for both educational and research purposes: the orbits of satellites, the instruments they carry, the radiation they detect, and, most importantly, the fundamental atmospheric data that can be retrieved from their observations. I first read this book when I was a graduate student in atmospheric sciences. Most books I have read are concerned with dynamics or physics, which are the classical fields. Very few of them discuss the practical yet not so established topics like satellite meteorology. This book is the most comprehensive one I have ever read that covers this whole new field.

Though I enjoy his later novel Illegal Aliens is my personal favorite Sci-fi humor book, this is a blast as well. I actually laughed out loud several times during the read. This one is my personal favorite in the STN series.

It is helpful for researchers on satellite communication system design; especially on non-GEO mobile systems.

This is an interesting reference book for satellite thermal control. There are a few quite significant examples in most chapters that give readers deep impressions on the application of thermal control. However, the last chapter (Thermal Verification Tests) is the weakest place and needs to be improved greatly in this book because only brief descriptions and statements (without any good examples like the previous chapters) in the thermal balance test. From my personal experience, the verification by test is the most important and formidable area for, not only thermal engineers but also system engineers, in the satellite thermal control development.

The table of contents of this book are reported below.
1. Signals and Systems
2. GPS Signal
3. Galileo Signal
4. GNSS Antennas and Front-Ends
5. GNSS Receiver Operation Overview
6. Acquisition
7. Carrier and Code Tracking
8. Data Processing and Positioning
9. Matlab Code
10. GNSS Signal Simulation
After a brief introduction on the basic elements of signal processing theory, this book gives an overview of GPS and Galileo signals. Then, the architectural design of a GNSS receiver is provided showing the hardware design (a front-end connect to a standard PC by USB) and focusing on the software approach and typical algorithms that are implemented to recover synchronisms.
The last two chapters contain a set of Matlab algorithms to track and process GPS and Galileo L1 data. The final result is a simple and useful tool for beginners and a good reference for expert reader.

Norris is an englishman who has spent over 40 years in the aerospace industry and time on the U.S. Apollo program. Here he reviews the history and technology of spy satellites. Readers will find a good, fairly clear review of the topic based on secondary, unclassified resources. The first half of the book is heavily historical while the second half devotes more space to strategy and analysis. Easily understandable for undergrads and high schoolers, it reads like an extended article from Aviation Week and Space Technology. English origins are obvious but he succeeds in covering all the international players (U.S., Britain, France, Russia, China, India, etc.) and that is a strength of the work. A little bit repetitive and at least one footnote is not supported. (He cites Rhodes but there is no Rhodes in the biblography. No doubt he meant Richard Rhodes). Still, all-in-all a good overview of a topic where there isn't much available. High school, college and medium-sized or larger public libraries will find this a good purchase.