X-band transmitters on the global marketplace

https://blog.satsearch.co/2020-02-27-x-band-transmitters-available-on-the-global-marketplace

by kartikkumar • 6 years ago

39 28 6 years ago

blog.satsearch.co

nimbius• 6 years ago

https://www.endurosat.com/cubesat-store/cubesat-communicatio...

Am i reading this correctly?? the x-band cubesat transmitter is the cost of a Telsa???

kartikkumar2• 6 years ago

Everyone is focused on the precipitous drop in launch costs, but the supply chain is really where the biggest opportunities now lie.

Many suppliers are struggling with finding the right balance between economies of scale, lead time, modularity/standardization, reliability, and (backwards) compatibility.

As industry volume increases, this should start straightening itself out. The challenge is that there's a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem at the moment: there's a severe lack of transparency, meaning that commercial market forces are largely missing.

So greater transparency = greater competitiveness = better price/value ratio = faster, better, cheaper satellites

dfox• 6 years ago

I would not be too surprised if components used in this device come out to total price range of 5k€-10k€ in one-off quantities, which paints the price in different light.

ohazi• 6 years ago

The individual transistors that are used for the LNA and power amplifier stages of these transceivers usually sell for tens to low hundreds of dollars a piece in single unit quantities. A good design will probably use 4-10 of them, depending mostly on output power requirements.

Throw in a few mixers for up/downconversion, some expensive ADCs, an FPGA, a CNCed aluminum enclosure, and you quickly end up at around $1000-$5000 in parts. There's definitely demand for these radios, but it's no consumer product, so the markup is going to be painful.

There's definitely opportunity here, but it will be difficult to get the prices down significantly when there are like five semiconductor companies that are doing most of the gouging. They're very happy with their current "sell you a specialty part for $45 that costs them $2 to produce" business.

Rebelgecko5• 6 years ago

I don't think you can get a Tesla for $22,000 (USD).

But these low volume (both in terms of # of units sold and SW&P) things get really expensive as high R&D costs are mostly amortized by people who are willing to ride the cutting edge. If you don't have high bandwidth requirements you can get away with some $20 transmitters using LORA or some cheapo ~900mhz transmitters that use amateur frequencies

someguydave5• 6 years ago

Your low-cost LORA/whatever plan would be foiled by lack of regulatory approval for using those frequencies and those waveforms.

bsder3• 6 years ago

If you don't have high bandwidth requirements

That's a pretty big IF, no?

VHF systems at 455MHz are about 5K Euros and maxes at 9600 Baud.

There was an article on HN recently about a cubesat mission that failed. And the communication system was one of the critical failure points.

kartikkumar2• 6 years ago

LoRa in/from space is a thing [1].

[1] https://lacuna.space/technology

someguydave5• 6 years ago

How much are you willing to spend to make sure that your bespoke satellite actually has working comms?

LatteLazy• 6 years ago

If you're spending 1m usd to launch the thing, is it wise to quibble over 50k? If you buy a 25k discount model and it breaks in orbit, will your boss thank you?

bsder3• 6 years ago

You are talking 100Mpbs+ data rates with error correction and decoding.

ADC's are probably coming in hot at 300-400MHz. That's Virtex-class land, and for a one-off FPGA at that class it's probably $5K or so.

Everything in aerospace is expensive because it has zero volume. The US DoD is always bitching about this, but it isn't willing to pony up the money to put volume behind their procurement to cause the costs to drop.

madengr5• 6 years ago

Yes, and I guarantee no one is getting rich. Been there, done that.

X-band transmitters on the global marketplace

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