Antenna Noise Temperature for Low Earth Orbiting Satellite Ground Stations at L and S Band

Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites are used for public communications and for scientific purposes. Most of the scientific satellites communicate with ground stations at S band. Environmental satellites usually contain also equipment for search and rescue services communicating with ground terminals at L band. The antenna noise temperature impacts satellite ground station performance. Antenna noise temperature is a measure of the effective noise integrated over the entire antenna pattern. On these bands the ionosphere effects are negligible. Heavy rain attenuation is considered as the most important atmospheric factor on determining antenna temperature on L and S bands. In this paper, the calculation and comparison of antenna noise temperature, caused under the worst propagation case, of the hypothetical satellite ground station implemented in different cities of Europe is given.