Future trends in satellite systems and their impact on material choice

During the next five years the market for satellite systems will increase more than two fold.The increase in market is predominantly made up of leostationary (low earth orbit) cluster systems, consisting of approximately 70 satellites in each cluster. Illustrations of these systems include Iridium, Iridium Next, Skybridge and Teledesic. These applications are made up of two market sectors, the first low frequencies in the range 1 to 2GHz, and the second utilising high frequencies such as Ka band in the range 27 to 40GHz, as opposed to Ku band (12-18 GHz) [1]. High frequency applications are becoming more important, firstly because those frequencies are not currently utilised and secondly because they offer the opportunity to increase the frequency of 
information transfer.