Satellite Trucks: What Are They and How They Work

For the past few years, the satellite technology has introduced amazing advances that give the viewers to have access to the live broadcasts and relevant news events from different parts of the world, especially the remote lands. While it is true that satellite technology established a new era for the television news and entertainment, some are still wondering how it actually works. Well, to make this possible, complex equipment and systems on the Earth and in the skies should work together.

What Is a Satellite Truck?

A satellite truck or satellite uplink truck is a modified truck used to establish links to satellite. This important tool is needed by the television stations to able to report news events from different locations. Likewise, government agencies use it when reporting safety information during disasters and when providing medical services on remote areas. Smaller but similar vehicles are sometimes used as well, including satellite vans.

What Are Two Types of Satellite Trucks?

The type of truck depends on the frequency band it uses. There are two types of satellite uplink trucks:

1. C-Band truck

This is a heavier and larger truck that weighs 10,000 to 26,000 pounds. They are also called the Transportable Earth Station. It can broadcast at a frequency of 3.7 - 4.2 Ghz for satellite downlink and 5.9 - 6.4Ghz for satellite uplink. The C-band truck is often used when covering outdoor events.

2. Ku Band truck

Operating at higher frequency of 10.95-14.5 Ghz, this type is more advanced than the C-band truck. It uses small trucks, which are also called as production vans. Ku band trucks are not recommended for outdoor events, as transmission issues occur when there are storms.

How Do They Work?

Satellite trucks have transmitters and satellite dishes on them to be able to transmit the audio and video produced by the broadcasters to the satellite that is 22,300 miles away from the Earth. This will then bounce back to the television network which is responsible for distributing the signal to the viewers.

Why Are Satellite Trucks Necessary?

There are many advantages in using satellite trucks. For the television networks, they are essential part of the industry, especially when they need to provide a clear transmission so that they may increase the revenue from their advertisers. They are also allowed to gather and broadcast news from the parts of the globe that are hard to reach.

Other advantages include portability, ease in operation and wide coverage. Because of these, they can be used for disaster relief services by government organizations. Unlike cable networks, they can stand natural disasters and are not prone to distortion and failure. 

Mobile transmission and how it's being used

Mobile transmission technology is always being further developed, allowing data transmission to keep getting faster. Leading companies in live video services and broadcast solutions and developed the technology that enables live video transmission from any location in the world. In 2012, live video was transmitted from the TEDx conference held in Tokyo to the Q's Eye screen above Shibuya crossing, an iconic seven story display, as well as transmitting the conference to thousands of tv screens across the world. To accomplish this, all that was used was a personal grade LU60 backpack and handheld LU40i mobile video transmission technology. No satellite was required, which increases the affordability of mobile transmission. This means that more companies can use mobile transmission technology and apply it to whatever use they have. This technology was also used during the 2012 Presidential Campaign, the Super Bowl, the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, and the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Though mobile transmission is not a new technology, the speed at which data can now be transferred is faster than ever, because live video requires faster data transmission.  

One rising use of mobile transmission data is for fuel management. Recent technological advances in fuel management now allow for over-the-air (abbreviated OTA) security and control of fleet vehicles. Using wireless communication for fleet security and control enables more preventative measures such as the ability to disable a vehicle while its operating and the ability to recover rogue or stolen vehicles.

Fuel management systems, which are used to monitor and control the fuel consumption and the stock of a fleet of vehicles, can now add more benefits; they can monitor the vehicles at any location using mobile transmission, they can improve the efficiency and productivity while reducing the costs. Being able to use wireless communication for fuel management gives the companies the ability to monitor and control their fleets 100 percent of the time, which in turn gives them more data to use towards finding more cost efficient fleet fuel management systems and solutions.    

According to Government Fleet almost 90 percent of fleet organizations use a fleet management system. This means that companies that develop fuel management solutions need to stay up to date with the software and equipment that they are able to provide. The next development is to create software that can be downloaded onto mobile phones and smartphones. The tools available to use for a live video transmission include: transmission backpacks (such as the LU60 mentioned above), a satellite/cellular hybrid, external antenna solutions and smartphones. Smartphones rank highest in location-independence, localizability and accessibility, so having fleet management system software available for smartphones and enabling the businesses to use video-over-cellular solutions as fuel management solutions would transform the news industry. One such technology is the LU700-SV, which is a hybrid video uplink system that one can use for vehicles. Applying this technology to a fleet of news vehicles would enable networks to report news, using live video, from all over the world.