A High Data Rate Ka Band Global Network For Weather

One best use of the weather satellite data is for initializing the complex computer weather model, which is run several times each day. But due to the magnitude of the data that may be downlinked by a single pass of a weather satellite, transmitting this data back to the Air Force Weather Agency, where it may be used in the model, presents a significant global data commu-nications challenge. This paper describes a Ka Band satellite communications network to accomplish the communications. This is representative of a class of emerging international data communications applications that might be supported by a global Ka Band satellite system. Further, the proliferation of national weather satellites data offers an opportunity to share weather data which might also be accomplished through a global Ka Band satellite communica-tions system. Latency is compared for satellite communications and fiber optic cable relay.