Satellite TV Uplink and Downlink

Satellite Dish Antenna?

A satellite dish is a dish-shaped type of parabolic antenna designed to receive or transmit information by radio waves to or from a communication satellite. The term most commonly means a dish used by consumers to receive direct broadcast satellite television from a direct broadcast satellite in geostationary orbit.

Satellite television relayed by Satellite System starts with a transmitting antenna located at suitable place with uplink facility. Uplink satellite system dishes are very large, as much as 9 to 12 meters (30 to 40 feet) in diameter.

The uplink dish is pointed toward a specific satellite and the uplinked signals are transmitted by Block Up Converter (BUC) within a specific frequency range, so as to be received by one of the transponders tuned to that frequency range aboard that satellite. The leg of the signal path from the Earth station to satellite is called the Uplink.

The transponder then re-transmits the signals back to Earth at a different frequency (a process known as translation, used to avoid interference with the uplink signal), which can be received with Low Noise Block Down Converter (LNB), typically in the C-band (4–8 GHz), Ku-band (12–18 GHz), or both. The leg of the signal path from the satellite to the receiving Earth station is called the downlink.