West Bengal launches third earth station

Radhika Bhuyan

KOLKATA: The government of West Bengal has launched its 3rd earth station in

Kolkata, which will be inaugurated during the ICE summit on November 18, 2001.

The station is located at the Salt Lake Electronics Complex. It will enable

faster communication, and transmit, emit and receive radio waves for data and

telecommunication purposes.

The station is a satellite-based mode of communication whose features make it

an interesting participant in the telecom arena including terrestrial wireless

and wire line networks.

The setting up of such an earth station in Kolkata will facilitate broadband

enterprise networks where multiple remote sites of various companies could be

connected with high-speed data networks (above 64 kbps). It would also provide

broadband Internet access to both the home and enterprise segment.

Besides, in remote areas it would mean an access to telephony that lack

terrestrial telecom infrastructure. In these areas satellite telephony stations

could be set up.

The earth station equipment installed handles higher channel densities and

meets a high-availability standard providing uninterrupted service. These

equipment are made flexible enough to handle various air-interface protocols.

Digital signal processing is a means to achieve these improvements that would

allow digital cellular telephones, echo cancellation and many other audio

frequency signal processing functions to be implemented at relatively lower

costs and with very few electronic components.

"We have invested around Rs 5 crore for the earth station project. The

setting up of this would provide basic infrastructure for both existing and

upcoming software firms and spurt IT development within the state," said

Chiranjib Rudra, director, STPI, Kolkata.

Satellite communication continues to grow, especially in the burgeoning

wireless marketplace. In satellite communication the type of orbits and

frequencies used influence the nature of the communication systems from these

earth stations.