Any Teleport in a Storm

When your communications make a 72,000km round trip into orbit and back to reach you, the last thing you want is for the weather to get in the way. For people and businesses relying on satellite signals to communicate across Brazil, this can be much more than a minor hiccup. So how could we tackle this issue and make sure our customers enjoyed a constant connection?

Providing a connection to our worldwide network, along with telephone and internet access, the main satellite traffic hub for Brazil is in Hortolândia near São Paulo. Planners carefully chose this location to reduce the risk of disruption to incoming signals by the local weather.

However, despite these efforts, severe storms can still disrupt connectivity. In particular, an issue known as ‘rain fade’ (when atmospheric rain absorbs microwave radio frequencies) can seriously disrupt satellite availability.

The solution was to create a second, alternative relay station (known as a teleport) to switch signals to when poor weather affected the main hub.

The trick, though, was to find the right location for the new station. Minimising the likelihood of torrential downpours happening at both sites was critical to the project’s success. So the search meant looking at microclimates in the area as well as historic weather records.

Eventually, we identified the ideal location — a place called Jaguariuna, just 30km from Hortolândia. It was close enough to synchronise data between the two ground stations. Yet the distance made all the difference to the climate, giving us the greatest chance of favourable weather at one or both sites.