In 1966, the Satellite Beacon Group of the Institute of Radio Physics and Electronics was established by Dr. Santimay Basu and tracking of beacons from Low Earth Orbiting satellites, namely, Explorer-22 and -27 startedat 20, 40 and 41 MHz respectively.
During 1972-1973, 136 MHz telemetry transmissions from the near-synchronous satellite INTELSAT-2F2 was used with a rotating Yagi antenna for continuous measurement of TEC and scintillations. This was the first geostationary satellite observation in India.
Signals from the geostationary satellite ATS-6 were recorded at this station at 140MHz in 1975-1976.
The first long-term (1977-1990) measurement from this station with a VHF beacon was performed with the Japanese geostationary satellite ETS-2(130 ° E) by recording the polarization and amplitude of its telemetry signal at 136MHz with an electronically switching polarimeter.
Amplitude recordings from VHF beacon of another satellite, FLEETSATCOM-2 at 244MHz were started in1981.
With the increasing use of space-based navigation and communication systems like the GPS operating in the lower microwave band, it became necessary to observe scintillations with geostationary satellites in this frequency range. Recording of the amplitude of the 1537MHz signal from INMARSAT-2F1 (64 ° E) was started in 1990 with a view to studying scintillations on geostationary satellite signals at lower microwave band.
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