SATELLITE NETWORK IN REMOTE COOPERATIVE IMAGE-BASED APPLICATIONS

At the inception of the Information Society program by the G7 countrie s and the Global Information Infrastructure (GII) initiative, national terrestrial (fiber optic cable) networks seem to have no choice but t o be interconnected by communication satellites. The NASA ACTS (Advanc ed Communication Technology Satellite), with its high powered Ka band, near giga-bit speed, and flexible steerable antenna capabilities, is increasingly recognized as playing a critical role in the GII initiati ve, due to its success in technological demonstration of network integ ration potential. Hawaii made an early decision and investment in ACTS -related satellite communication technology by acquiring the High Data Rate (HDR) earth station to provide the necessary, on-demand, long-ha ul link for this remote but strategic mid-Pacific location. Experiment s with applications in medical image sharing, supercomputing and graph ics networking, remote astronomical observation, and coordinated disas ter management, demonstrate not only that high data rate satellite com munication is a necessity for remote cooperative image-based applicati ons but also highlight the unique advantages of Hawaii's central locat ion and its potential for providing an essential link in the GII.