Patent ID: 8401466

Claim:
A satellite communication system comprising: a first satellite configured to receive first information at a higher data rate, process the first information into a first plurality of lower bandwidth signals, and relay the first plurality of lower bandwidth signals using a first satellite communication link; a first plurality of geographically-separated ground nodes configured to receive the first plurality of lower bandwidth signals and transmit a plurality of terrestrial signals using second communication links; and a central processing node configured to receive the plurality of terrestrial signals over the second communication links and combine the plurality of terrestrial signals; wherein the first satellite utilizes a plurality of transmit antennas to transmit the plurality of lower bandwidth signals, wherein a transmit antenna is separated from other transmit antennas in the plurality of transmit antennas by a separation distance, D TX , where D TX > λ N RX ⁢ D RX ⁢ R , where D RX is a distance between two nodes in the first plurality of ground nodes, N RX is a number of receive antennas in the first plurality of ground nodes, λ is a wavelength of a transmitted signal, and R is a range between the plurality of transmit array and the first plurality of ground nodes.