Our Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites spin around the Earth at 575 km altitude, completing an orbit every 90 minutes. These space birds deliver total coverage to the planet. From pole-to-pole, each satellite can transport hundreds of GB every day for any customer, providing superior connectivity for the most demanding needs.
Kepler's custom-built software-defined radio (SDR) is an ultra-high-throughput communications payload that offers considerable flexibility on the services offered.
This SDR allows us to use the same satellite hardware for talking to a ground station at 500 Mbps as it would for talking to 10 simultaneous IOT aggregators at 1 Mbps each.
It allows us to quickly setup hardware for launch and then constantly improve the satellite’s capabilities with software updates — something that would be impossible with hardware radio solutions. Essentially with this radio, Kepler is able to use the same hardware to support different types of customers, from customers that need 1 MB of data a month to those that require 1 GB of data a day.
- Dynamically adjust channel bandwidths and data rates
- Enables wide variety of telecommunication protocols for different applications
- Modify center frequency to ensure non-interference with other networks
Kepler launched and operates the first commercial Ku-band LEO satellite.
Ku-band (10.7 - 12.7 GHz for transmit and 14.0 - 14.5 GHz for receive) is substantially higher than traditional nanosatellite frequencies which are often around 2 GHz for bi-directional communications. This offers considerable increase in available bandwidth to support larger data applications.
A sophisticated antenna array is necessary at these higher frequencies. An antenna array is made up of many smaller antenna elements that, when combined, create a high-gain and highly directed radiofrequency beam.
The way LEO constellations work is simple. Our satellites are launched into space and placed into Low Earth Orbit at around 575 km from Earth.
Since LEO satellites are located closer to Earth (less than 2,000 km from the planet), latency is significantly reduced compared to geostationary satellites at 35,000 km from Earth.
Being closer to Earth offers results in better signal strength and this means less power is required for transmission compared to the big GEO satellites which experience significant signal loss due to its distance from the planet.
Our LEO satellites are placed into a polar orbit meaning they orbit over the poles. A single satellite can see the entire planet, but a large number of satellites are needed to provide a continuous and real-time communications service.
