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by vodou 1400 days ago
This is not about SDR, it is about "software defined satellite". It is a generalization of the SDR concept, involving the whole satellite. Basically, it is about designing a more configurable satellite, suitable for a wider variety of tasks.
2 comments
krisoft 1400 days ago
> This is not about SDR

Can the satelite in question grow software defined optics and look at things?

Can it grow software defined manipulators and fix an other satelite?

Can it grow a software defined solar sail?

If the answer to these is no then what makes it different from a spaceborne SDR? (And for the record ain’t nothing wrong with that.)

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noselasd 1400 days ago
Seems the "software defined" in these things are mostly about reconfiguring antennas and radio beams. It's perhaps a bit more than a traditional SDR, after all there's not much modern radio communication not using SDRs, even the Mars rovers and satellites have them.
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adrian_b 1400 days ago
According to the press release, it is just a spaceborne SDR together with a very configurable antenna array, which can be used to provide various kinds of communication links.
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ugjka 1400 days ago
The main feature is that you can "beam" a very narrow beam of rf to a moving target like military convoy
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jaywalk 1400 days ago
That's nothing terribly special with satellites. They've had phased array antennas for a while now.
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vodou 1400 days ago
Fair point.

But I think the space industry tries to communicate something other than SDR when they are talking about software-defined satellites. E.g., satellites as a service, allowing different customers time share a satellite and use it for different purposes by making the capabilities wider.

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Testmens 1400 days ago
Industry 4.0 is basically slapping remote features onto expensive industry machines.

Took me a while to realizxe that this is actually not normal and for them its a revolution...

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adrian_b 1400 days ago
For now, the configurability of the sattelite appears to refer to using a configurable antenna array, which allows the configuration of a variable number of beams, in various directions, and with various directivity properties, presumably besides an SDR.
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