Generalized characteristics of communication, sensing, and navigation satellite systems

A generalized framework has been developed for classifying space system architectures and their characteristics for any mission in communications, sensing, or navigation. For each of these applications, the overall mission objective is to transfer informationbetween remote locations and to do so effectively and economically.Consequently, satellite systems can be represented as informationtransfer networks, serving origin–destination informationmarkets. Their capabilities are characterized by four quality-of-service parameters that relate to the isolation, rate, integrity, and availability of the information transferred. This generalized approach has led to signiŽ cant conclusions in a variety of applications and has allowed a comprehensive characterization of satellite systems in general. Based on the argumentspresented, deduced from organized, qualitativeanalysis, it wouldappear that the potential offered by distributed satellite systems is very great.