And, in a related question, wouldn't more proccessing demand more power from the batteries/solar panels? I know my PC cetainly draws a lot more power when the CPO is working hard. Just curiosity questions, I support digital, FM, and Linear satellites. If it were not for FM sats, I would never have gotten interested in satelites at all. The congestion on the FM sateliltes drove me to start using linear satellites.
Doug K9DLP
From: Dave Marthouse dmarthouse@gmail.com To: amsat-bb@amsat.org Sent: Tuesday, July 22, 2014 10:41 AM Subject: [amsat-bb] Digital Satellites Question
I have been following the digital satellite discussion with great interest. Both sides have valid points.
I would like to pose a strictly engineering question. Keep in mind that I'm not an engineer but consider myself reasonably well read on the amateur satellite world.
A digital satellite would imply loads of processing power on the satellite. I would assume that with this additional activity that there will be more hardware on the bird with more complexity as this won't be a bent pipe system.
With more physical hardware of much more complexity in orbit what about the radiation hazards to this more complex and physical hardware heavier system? Wouldn't a software based system be prone to radiation induced hardware and software glitches? What about shielding etc?
Dave Marthouse N2AAM dmarthouse@gmail.com
-- Dave Marthouse dmarthouse@gmail.com
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