Very small aperture terminal (VSA T) networks offer great opportunities to combine satellite technology and the needs of education in Thailand. An educational VSAT network for Thailand needs a central hub station in Bangkok and seven remote sites with VSAT equipment. The network supports two way compressed video, voice and data links between the central hub and VSAT sites.

This thesis examines rain margin, system availability, VSAT antenna size and transponder power utilization in an educational VSAT system using Ku-band. Demand assignment multiple access (DAMA) and single channel per carrier (SCPC) transmission techniques work well for multiple access purposes and minimizes the cost of the space segment. The moving picture expert group-2 (MPEG-2) system is the best choice of compression system in this design.

The final performance analysis shows that with the THAICOM-l satellite and 2-Watt VSAT transmitters, and 1.8m or 2.4m VSAT antennas, VSAT-to-hub links can be established using the full transponder power with significant rain margins. Typical outage times for this system are 98.5% for the hub-to-VSAT links and 95.0% for the VSAT-to-hub links.