Jargon Buster

Get to know your product and service by understanding the acronyms and terminologies used in the world of satellite technology.


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Jamming Deliberate interference with a signal caused by another signal transmitted in the same frequency.
JPEG Joint pictures expert group. A subgroup of ISO, which has established international standards for the digital compression of still pictures. JPEG is designed for compressing full-color or gray-scale images of natural, real-world scenes. It works well on photographs, naturalistic artwork, and similar material; not so well on lettering, simple cartoons, or line drawings. JPEG handles only still images, but there is a related standard called MPEG for motion pictures. Everyone to make image files smaller, and applications which need to store 24-bit-per-pixel color data instead of 8-bit-per-pixel data.
Ka-Band Primarily used in satellites operating at 30GHz uplink and 20 GHz downlink and is intended in support of future applications such as mobile
voice. A portion of the RF spectrum located between 18 GHz and 31 GHz.		 Military
Kbps KiloBits Per Second - One thousand bits per second. Kbps is used as a rating of relatively slow transmission speed compared to the common Mbps or Gbps ratings. Data transfer speed over the networks (including the internet) is calculated in terms of bits per second: kilobits (kb small case “k” and small case “b”). The higher the kbps i.e. more the bits transferred per second, more the speed, faster the network/connection. Here k stands for 1000

1 kbps (kilo bits per second) = 1000 bits per second
1 Mbps (mega bits per second) = 1000 kilo bits per second.
1 Gbps (giga bits per second) = 1,000 mega bits per second.
KBps Kilo Bytes Per Second
KHz Kilohertz. Refers to a unit of frequency equal to 1,000 Hertz.
Ku-Band Refers to the frequency in the 12 GHz to 14 GHz range used in support of such applications as broadcast TV, DBS, and direct-to-home
television.		 Satellite communications and backhaul for GSM, Broadcasters from remote locations.
L-Band L band is a frequency range between 390MHz and 1.55GHz which is used for satellite communications and for terrestrial communications between satellite equipment. Used for communication between outdoor satellite equipment and indoor equipment.
LAN Local Area Network. A local area network (LAN) is a group of computers and associated devices that share a common communications line and typically share the resources of a single processor or server within a small geographic area (for example, within an office building). Usually, the server has applications and data storage that are shared in common by multiple computer users. A local area network may serve as few as two or three users (for example, in a home network) or as many as thousands of users (for example, in an FDDI network). Corporates and organizations which want to share ICT resources (email, printing, internet)
Leased Line A dedicated circuit typically supplied by the telephone company. A telecommunication line is used to link two premises (mostly branch offices) via the public telecom operator. At each of the two ends is a modem that enables communication between the two sites. Interconnecting branch offices; Last mile solution connecting individuals/corporate to the ISP
LEO A local exchange carrier is a local phone company and an inter-exchange carrier (IEC or IXC) carries long-distance calls. Telephone communication companies
LNB Low noise block (down converter). An electronic part of a satellite earth station that is used to amplify the signal collected by the reflector and the feed horn. Satellite Communications (broadcast) reception.