-We will now talk about mobile, transportable and fixed terminals. We are now clearly playing in the major league. Indeed, bigger form factor but also bigger communication capacity. Let us see mobile terminals. On this photo, we see a mobile terminal whose full form factor fits in a small suitcase that can be carried with a single hand. What you see in the lower right part is the satellite terminal itself. This one, in this example, aims at working with the satellites of the operator Inmarsat. In order to provide more services than a simple Internet access, this terminal is supplemented with other devices stored in the suitcase. They provide wireless Internet access, but also create a small mobile telephony communication bubble that can handle up to five calls. This small mobile telephony communication bubble is connected to the heart of the mobile telephony network by going through the Inmarsat terminal. The only constraint in this case is to remain in the acceptable bit rate provided by the terminal, around 450 kbit/s. This is typically the kind of equipment often used by reporters or simply by people leaving for humanitarian relief. The specificity of the Inmarsat terminal is that it provides wired Internet services. So everything will have to be brought down to this Internet service and for example do voice-over-IP or teleconference-over-IP. The full terminal as illustrated here costs a few thousand euros with the suitcase and the other devices. The usage cost, this will surprise you, to send and receive one megabyte is 6 dollars. It is indeed expensive, but it will operate almost anywhere on Earth since the operator Inmarsat provides a global coverage through its geostationary satellites. That is it for the mobile terminal. Let us now see transportable terminals. The example shown here is a transportable terminal manufactured by the French Space Agency and the company Thales Alenia Space. This photo shows the deployment of this terminal during the Haiti earthquake in 2010. As we can guess it, the terminal is based around a case meeting air-transport standards. So it is easy to carry it by plane. This terminal, as you can see on the right of the case, is topped by a big antenna with a very interesting particularity. It is an auto-pointing antenna. When the satellite it must aim at is programmed, just by pushing "start", the antenna automatically points at the satellite in order to establish the link. This is extremely handy to use. We will concretely see how this works in the "Going Further" episode. Beyond this auto-pointing antenna, the airborne case also includes other devices such as modems, a power generator, a network switch and router, as well as several drawers to store computer devices. As we can see, the approach here is extremely modular. This goes along with the manufacturing philosophy of this terminal which provides an access to satellite capacity. It is up to us to use this satellite capacity as we wish. To use this satellite capacity, we can use different replaceable elements. Use one kind of modem or another depending on the type of service needed. So we have an extremely modular and flexible approach thanks to the access to satellite capacity. But the price to pay is the cost of the terminal, between 100 000 and 200 000 euros approximately as integrated here, and above all the space used. The form factor is very important. Once again, this is the price to pay for modularity. Then we have fixed terminals. In theory, a fixed terminal looks like a transportable terminal that cannot be transported. In reality, it is not exactly that. First, the antenna is already a major difference. For a fixed terminal an auto-pointing antenna is not required since the terminal will not be moved. The antenna needs to be pointed once and for all. So we do not need all the complexity of the auto-pointing antenna. Then, we will often split the fixed terminal into two parts. A part that remains outside, the outdoor unit, and another one inside, the indoor unit. Remember that when I showed you the equipment we bought for our satellite Internet subscription, it was exactly the same. The satellite dish was outside and we kept the modem inside. In this case it will be the same. We can indeed see here a terminal with the outdoor unit part, called a VSAT, which is a terminal with a very small aperture. When talking about aperture, we are talking about the antenna aperture. This terminal can include an antenna which, in this example, measures about 2 meters. You can notice that we automatically need some civil engineering. A slab had to be poured in order to fix the terminal. On the other hand, the advantage of these terminals, these VSATs, is that, thanks to the size of the antenna, they can handle important throughputs and thus simultaneously supply several users. We have seen the whole array of mobile, transportable and fixed terminals. Once again, we clearly see the relation between the form factor and the communications capacity.
