V-Band

Atmospheric Absorption of Millimeter Waves

Silicon Greybeard is talking about a satellite built for Boeing to test some V-Band communications gear. V-Band is very high frequency. At 60 Ghz it is much higher than the other frequency bands used for satellite communications.

The chart above illustrates how much a radio signal is reduced when it passes through the atmosphere. Note the peak right around 60 GHz, which is where the V-Band is. This makes it look communicating with a satellite using V-Band signals is going to a little difficult. So why would they choose to use such a frequency? As the Silicon Greybeard says, maybe they are not trying to communicate with ground based stations. Well, that's dumb. What else is there? Umm, other satellites, other spacecraft and best of all, UFO's.

Microwave Frequency Bands

RF's original chart used millimeters (mm) for some wavelengths and centimeters (cm) for some others. I changed it to use all millimeters.

Microwave Frequency Bands

The bump in the red line is because the F band overlaps the upper part of the W band.