Glossary Terms Beginning B

0-9 : A : B : C : D : E : F : G : H : I : J : K : L : M

N : O : P : Q : R : S : T : U : V : W : X : Y : Z

Backhaul: Contribution circuit: traditionally a terrestrial communications path linking an earth station to a local switching network; now also refers to satellite contribution paths.
Back-off: Process of reducing the input and output power levels of a travelling wave tube to obtain more linear operation and hence minimize the risk of distortion. Expressed in dB.
Bandpass filter: Active or passive circuit which allows signals within the desired frequency band to pass but prevents signals outside this pass band from getting through.
Bandwidth: Measure of spectrum (frequency) use or capacity; the amount of information that can be passed at a given time over a certain span of frequency.
Basic rate ISDN: ISDN service of 2 × 64 kbps bearers and a 16 kbps data control channel. Also referred to as 2B+D.
Baud: Rate of data transmission based on the number of symbols transmitted per second; see Symbol.
Beacon: Low-power carrier transmitted by a satellite which supplies the satellite operations control centre on the ground with a means of monitoring telemetry data and tracking the satellite.
Beam: Signal from uplink or satellite.
Beamwidth: Angle or conical shape of the beam the antenna projects.
Bearer: Generic term for a carrier signal.
BER: Bit error rate: a measurement of the quality of a data link.
Binary: See Digital.
Bird: Colloquial term for satellite.
Bit: Single digital unit of information.
Bit error rate: See BER: the fraction of a sequence of message bits that are in error. A bit error rate of 10-6 means that there is an average of one error per million bits.
Bit-rate: Speed of a digital transmission, measured in bits per second.
Bit-stream: Continuous stream of data bits transmitted over a communication channel with no separators between the character group.
Bizphone: Land-line, cellular or satellite phone used for satellite co-ordination at the SNG uplink.
Block downconverter: Device used to convert the C- or Ku-band signal down to L-band.
Block: A group of pixels in a compression process.
Bonding: Method of combining a number (n) of discrete data channels of data bandwidth d to provide the user with a single combined data channel of n×d. Boresight Main focus of an antenna; the direction of maximum gain of an antenna. Box Area in which the satellite has to be maintained while in station-kept geostationary orbit; see Station-kept box.
bps: Bits per second.
BPSK: Binary phase shift key: modulation technique.
BRI: Basic rate ISDN; Basic Rate Interface (for ISDN).
Broadband: Referring to a bandwidth greater than the baseband signal; a single path that has multiple independent carriers multiplexed onto it; a large bandwidth digital 'pipe'.
Broadbeam: See Widebeam.
BSS: Broadcast-Satellite Service: ITU service designation.
Buffer: Digital memory store on the input and output of a compression device.