Receiving Images from Geostationary Weather Satellite Himawari-8 via HimawariCast

Himawari-8 is the Japanese Meteorological Agencys primary meteorological satellite which replaced MTSAT-2 in mid-2015. The termination of the MTSAT series ended L-band LRIT/HRIT direct-broadcast services which dated back to the start of the GMS series in the late 1970s. The current series of Himawari satellites instead disseminate processed data through a service called HimawariCast.

This guide is a work-in-progress! See the himawari-rx repo for more info.

HimawariCast is uplinked by JMA to a C-band transponder on JCSAT-2B (154˚E), as opposed to the GOES-16/17 or GK-2A satellites which have on-board L-band direct-broadcast transponders.

Overview of the HimawariCast system (Credit: JMA/BOM)
Frequency 4148 MHz
Type DVB-S2
Modulation QPSK
Symbol Rate 2586.148 kSps
Bandwidth ~3.1 MHz
FEC 3/5
Roll-off 20%
Polarisation Horizontal
Beam/Footprint C-band Global
JCSAT-2B C-band global beam footprint (Credit: Satbeams)

Resources

Himawari-8 WMO OSCAR
Introduction of the HimawariCast service