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and beams a broadcast signal to satellites in geosynchronous orbit. The satellites receive the signals from the broadcast station and rebroadcast them to Earth. The viewer's dish picks up the signal from the satellite (or multiple satellites in the same part of the sky) and passes it on to the receiver in the viewer's house. The receiver processes the signal and passes it on to a standard TV Satellite signals have a pretty long path to follow before they appear on your TV screen in the form of your favorite TV show. Because satellite signals contain such high-quality digital data, it would be impossible to transmit them without compression.

oday, most TV customers get their programming through a direct broadcast satellite (DBS) provider, such as Sun direct or Airtel Network. The provider selects programs and broadcasts them to subscribers as a set package.Unlike earlier programming, the provider's broadcast is completely digital, which means it has much better picture and sound quality. Early satellite television was broadcast in C-band radio -- radio in the 3.7gigahertz (GHz) to 6.4-GHz frequency range. Digital broadcast satellite transmits programming in the Ku frequency range(11.7 GHz to 14.5 GHz).

There are five major components involved in a direct to home (DTH) or direct broadcasting (DBS) satellite system: Programming sources are simply the channels that provide programming for broadcast. The provider doesn't create original programming itself; it pays other companies (HBO, for example, or ESPN) for the right to broadcast their content via satellite. The broadcast center is the central hub of the system. At the broadcast center, the TV provider receives signals from various programming sources

Direct to home service is a broadcast system in which the reception is by the end users dish antenna directly from the satellite

Compression simply means that unnecessary or repetitive information is removed from the signal before it is transmitted. The signal is reconstructed after transmission. Mostly they use MPEG-2 or MPEG-4 type of compression. The rate of compression depends on the nature of the programming.

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After the video is compressed, the provider encrypts it to keep people from accessing it for free. Encryption scrambles the digital data in such a way that it can only be decrypted (converted back into usable data) if the receiver has the correct decryption algorithm and security keys.

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In this case, the point is the dish's feed horn, which passes the signal on to the receiving equipment. In an ideal setup, therearen't any major obstacles between the satellite and the dish, so the dish receives a clear signal.The central element in the feed horn is

Once the signal is compressed and encrypted, the broadcast center beams it directly to one of its satellites. The satellite picks up the signal with an onboard dish, amplifies the signal and uses another dish to beam the signal back to Earth, where viewers can pick it up.The feed horn in the parabolic dish transmits the signal on the dish which transmits the signal nearly in an narrow cross section and reaches the satellite.

the low noise blockdown converter, or LNB. The LNB amplifies the radio signal bouncing off the dish and filters out the noise (radio signals not carrying programming). The LNB passes the amplified, filtered signal to the satellite receiver inside the viewer's house.

Parabolic dish
It is a type of antenna which is in the shape of a parabola with a feed horn

When the signal reaches the viewer's house, it is captured by the satellite dish. The receiving dish works in the exact opposite way of the transmitter. When a beam hits the curved dish, the parabola shape reflects the radio signal inward onto a particular point, just like a concave mirror focuses light onto a particular point.

at the focus of the dish. It works like a concave mirror for transmission and reception. For receiving ends in homes it is almost 90 cm in diameter

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can't tape one program and watch another.

The end component in the entire satellite TV system is the receiver. The receiver has four essential jobs: It de-scrambles the encrypted signal. In order to unlock the signal, the receiver needs the proper decoder chip for that programming package. The provider can communicate with the chip, via the satellite signal, to make necessary adjustments to its decoding programs. The provider may occasionally send signals that disrupt illegal de-scramblers as an electronic counter measure (ECM) against illegal

It keeps track of pay-per-view programs and periodically phones a computer at the provider's headquarters to communicate billing information.

You are an engineer if..

Youreceive jokes through email Buying flowers to your girlfriend or spending the money to upgrade your RAM is a moral dilemma You can type 70 words per minute but cant read your own

users. It takes the digital MPEG-2 or MPEG-4 signal and converts it into an analog format that a standard television can recognize. It extracts the individual channels from the larger satellite signal. When you change the channel on the receiver, it sends just the signal for that channel to your TV. Since the receiver spits out only one channel at a time, you

handwriting You cant write unless your has both horizontal and vertical lines You carry a list for everything except for groceries You have more friends on the internet than in your real life

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ight-controlled oscillator, i.e., an oscillator whose output frequency increases with the amount of light shining on it. The main components of this circuit are the 741, a general purpose operational amplifier IC, and the lightdependent resistor or photocell, which serves as the circuit's light collector. The 741 in this circuit is configured as an oscillator driving a piezoelectric buzzer.

and 'high' continuously. When the output of the 741 becomes low, this is fed back to the inverting input, causing the 'high' voltage at the non-inverting input to 'dominate' and force the 741 output to go back to 'high'.

When the output of the 741 goes 'high', this is again fed back to the noninverting input, which drives the output to go low, and the cycle starts over again. The rate at which the output oscillates depends on how fast capacitor C1 charges and discharges, which in turn depends on the resistance The across the light-dependent It is an oscillator whose output resistor or photocell. The more voltage of light shining on the photocell, frequency is controlled by the 741 is the lower is its resistance. The the amount of light falling used as lower the resistance, the faster input capacitor C1 charges or on it voltage to discharges, and the higher is the the frequency at which the inverting 741's output oscillates. This is input, which forces the output of why this circuit is a lightthe 741 to go back to the opposite controlled oscillator its level every time it changes state, frequency of oscillation increases causing it to toggle between 'low' as the light shining on it increases.

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ccording to Prof. Martin McCall, leader of the research project, it should be possible to use metamaterials to "open up" light by speeding up the leading half of the light waves while slowing down the trailing half. This would create a corridor between the two halves, at which point their source would not be observable this is the point in spacetime at which energy, information or matter could be secretly moved or manipulated. The leading light waves would then be slowed back down to normal speed, while the trailing

trailing cars slow down, a gap opens between them which the pedestrian could run through. If the trailing cars then catch back up to the lead cars, all that someone watching the traffic head-on would observe is a steady stream of cars, with no pedestrian to be seen. While its questionable whether well be seeing spacetime cloaks anytime

waves would be sped up, so they could catch up and seamlessly close the gap. To an observers eyes receiving those light waves, it would look like one continuous, uneventful scene The Imperial College team use the analogy of a pedestrian crossing a busy road. If the lead cars speed up and the

particularly soon, the technology could also be used in signal processing and computing. An optical data channel, for instance, could be interrupted so that a calculation could be performed for a parallel channel. That interruption would then be hidden, allowing for continuous processing.

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he Airbag is a very common automobile safety device and the goal of our research project was to be able to explain the processes that go on behind the scene whenever it is activated. And so this is what we found out: Airbags are inflated by gas produced in a chemical reaction Gas inflates the airbag with velocities of up to 320km/h The entire process happens in 20-30 milliseconds The chemical reaction is triggered by an ACU (Airbag Control Unit) The ACU has to decide whether or not to deploy the airbag once the sensors located throughout the car report a collision The circuit has to be very reliable; no room for error is allowed The ACU has to make the decision really fast; in less time than it takes for a collision to occur Since we were studying electronics, our main goal was to model the circuitry of the ACU and show the entire process of airbag deployment:

This circuit processes the various data from various parts of the car so as to decide whether the car has crashed or not so that it can release the airbag
1. Sensors detect collision 2. ACU receives and processes information 3. ACU decides to deploy airbags 4. Passengers survive the crash There are numerous sensors scattered all over an average modern day vehicle: Accelerometers measure acceleration/deceleration Impact sensors detect collision

and physical damage Pressure sensors detect physical pressure applied to the vehicle Tachometers - wheel speed sensors

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Brake pressure sensors monitor brake Gyroscopes - devices that detect rollovers The ACU is programmed to deploy different airbags (front, side, knee etc.) depending on the different combinations of data received from sensors. For instance, if the on-board

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and can only accept digital signals communicated using machine code, whereas the electric pulses from sensors are examples of an analog signal. Thus they need to be converted first. The circuit diagram describes the circuit we built to implement the block diagram

gyroscope detects that the vehicle has flipped over, the front airbags may not necessarily have to be deployed. However, side airbags will need to be activated because the person will likely fall on their side. Sensors are very small devices and the signals they produce are relatively weak. The signal has to be amplified in order to analyze it. However, amplification may interfere with the signal, so the signal must be filtered as well. The Multiplexer receives numerous signals and presents them to the ACU in orderly fashion, because the ACU can only process one signal at a time. Prior to that, the signal has to go through the ADC (Analog-to-Digital Converter). The ACU is a digital device

above: 1) AC Voltage Source (1) models the output signal of a sensor 2) High Pass Filer (2) filters the output signal 3) 741 Operational Amplifier (3) amplifies the filtered signal 4) Wheatstone bridge (4) is used to change the amplified AC signal into DC; this 5) Mimics the function of ADC (Analogto-Digital Converter) 6) Comparator (5) compares the received DC signal with the base 5V signal and depending on the difference in voltages, sends current to either the green LED (NO AIRBAG) or the red LED (YES AIRBAG)