Base station vs. Satellite costs -- any examples?

I'm trying to gin up some example cost/benefit trades. I had been thinkingof using satellite TV as an example: satellites intended for distribution to a few cable TV providers tend to use lower power upstairs, and require the user to have a big antenna and sensitive receiver, where direct-to-home satellites have bigger, heavier, more expensive to build and to launch higher power transmitters to enable the much more numerous users to have smaller, cheaper systems.

But I'm not finding any online references that detail power levels, except for one on salon.com that is vague.

Anyone have any references? It doesn't even have to be satellite TV -- I'mmostly looking for real-world examples of how many users leads to a need for cheap receivers (which often drives the transmitter price up), vs. how just a few users leads to a desire for lower-cost transmitters, even if the receiver price goes up as a consequence.

Input welcomed.

I think I hate Google Groups, but my IP is doing a "backbone switchover" and I can't get to my news server.

 

Do you need satelite data? Or could you use someting else.

Like AM/FM radio broadcast power vs range/number of households
covered?

Or size of the motor at the top of a ski lift vs number of
passengers.
(When I was a little toddler we skied at a little club that had a rope
tow power by an old Model T motor.... no more than ~20 people going up
at one time.)

George H.

 

The ski lift example isn't what I was thinking of -- I was more thinking ofhow a system that has a 1:many relationship between components would drivedifferent pricing than one with relationship closer to 1:1.

The broadcast radio gets closer, but I'm more looking at examples that highlight the economic advantage of a receiver can be built for $25 with transmitters costing in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, instead of doublingthe price of the receiver and halving the price of the transmitter.

 

From memory back in the days of 12 foot dishes the transponder in the
satellite was 100W

Scale the dimensions of today's home satellites and you get 2kW to
4kW, right?

 

Echostar stuff, 120W per transponder (32 Ku band transponders). 4kw
backbones seem to be the norm for 'spot' satellites. But, newer sats can
go up to 15kw.

<http://www.ssloral.com/html/satexp/echostarix.html>

Cheers

 

The switch to Ku was to enable a smaller dish. The satellite industry
used its lobby power such that any CONUS home can have any number of
dishes that are no larger than one meter. In the socialist state of
Alaska, anything goes.

Dish and Direct need an 18inch dish at a minimum. FTA needs around 30
inches.

Lygnsat has all the delivery data.

 

At the extreme end of that spectrum is the entire deep space network and
a few dozen space probes.

Or at the other end GPS where the thanks to advances in chip fabrication
the receivers have now become consumer items.

Not a transmit and receive one but if you look back at the history of
VLBI it coincided with the mass produced VHS cassettes and recorders and
with a bit of additional custom electronics they were used instead of
expensive custom digital data cassettes in truck loads.

Every dish in a VLBI network records the signals it observers with a
local H-maser time stamp synchronised to global time. The tapes are then
moved to a central correlator to be matched up and correlated.

You can't avoid a bit of local shift since the atmospheric thickness
varies and so the correlator has to hunt for the white light fringe.

Just remember that these days it seems to double space all posts.

 

thank you for the correction with some facts.

 

That rates right up there with all those 'infomercials' showing
worthless products.

 

I wonder if you could find any data on this relating to MESH network topologies? In (some of) those configurations, the traditional macro-scale base station transmitter vanishes altogether. Just a thought.
-mpm