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In satellite communications a ground station on the earth will send and receive signals from the satellite. The signals will have propagation delays ranging between 0.5 to 5 seconds due to the distances involved. The transmission frequency will normally be in the ranges of 10 to 15 GHz with a transmission speed in the range of 1 to10Mbps. GEOs can cover as much as a third of the earth's surface.
Satellite Internet services can be used in locations where physical Internet access is not available and in devices that move frequently.
Internet access via satellite is available in most parts of the globe, including remote areas like forests and to ships at sea.
There are two basic kinds of satellite nodes: geostationary and non-geostationary satellite nodes. In addition, terminal nodes can be placed on the Earth's surface.
Satellite links resemble wireless links. Each satellite node has one or more satellite network interface stacks, to which channels are connected to the physical layer object in the stack. Satellite links differ from wireless links in two major respects:
The transmit and receive interfaces must be connected to different channels, and
There is no ARP implementation. Currently, the Radio Propagation Model is a placeholder for users to add more detailed error models if so desired; the current code does not use a propagation model.
