About Our Service, “WarpHub InterSat” Vol.2
As mentioned in the last article, we are describing more about our service in this story.
During the conversation with our related stakeholders, they often say, “Oh, MEO mission”. Because number of MEO missions are relatively lower rather than other orbit(LEO, GEO) due to the radiation environment in MEO(Medium Earth Orbit: 2,000km- 36,000km).
In this story, we’ll share the view of following;
1. Why we choose MEO?
2. About the milestone
3. About our team
1. Why we choose MEO?
There are similar projects which try to build telecommunication service in the world. Let’s say, DARPA, LaserLight, Skyloom, and more. Some of them design “LEO-LEO-Ground” network system, others do “LEO-GEO-Ground” network system.
Regarding visible area of relay satellite and optical terminal size, MEO is most reasonable choice. Here is why.
First of all, there are some issues in LEO-LEO system. One is high-latency due to frequent data relay, the other is frequent disconnection and reacquisition, therefore, it’s unlikely to provide stable network.
When it comes to LEO-GEO network system, it seems unreasonable for commercial use due to the upsizing of devices and cost-increase. When we try to communicate with optical link such long distance, it is inevitable to upsize the devices and which brings cost-increase for development and deploy the satellite in GEO. That is why we assume that commercial use of LEO-GEO network is unlikely.
Let’s see our architecture “WarpHub InterSat “(LEO-MEO network). We shall deploy three satellites on MEO to relay the data from user (LEO) satellites and relay satellites downlink the data to the ground.
As shown in the image, we communicate in optical link between user satellite-relay satellite, and relay satellite send the ground with RF due to the cloud and air disturbance. The data rate between user-relay satellite is 1Gbps (or above), relay satellite-ground is 1Mbps(or above).
You can download the document of our service on our website.
2. About the milestone
Our constellation consists of three satellites. We will launch the first satellite by the end of 2022, and complete one constellation by deploying 2 more satellites in the next year. If it goes well, we shall launch additional constellation after 2024 to scale and sustain the service accordingly.
We’ve been working on the ground demonstration for optical telecommunication to prove the feasibility of this concept.
You could see the milestone on our website.
3. About our team
We have originally started from a project at University of Tsukuba, thus the majority of team members graduated it. And some specialists from different field have joined as our advisory (ex-CEO of Sony and ex-director of JAXA). They always give us informative and helpful advice from different perspective.
We also have powerful technical advisor. Prof. Takayama is a member of OICETS which succeeded the world’s first demonstration of inter-satellite optical communication in outer space.
It may sound unique, but we basically never set a lot of departments. There are just two, one is engineer team, the other is business development, that’s it. The people who belong to business development are responsible for every required tasks like, sales, marketing, PR, GR, and whatever.
It is same in engineer though profession is different for each member. Because we aim for the same goal even if the background is different. We are one team.
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