The work in this project concerns data communication to a commercial communication satellite. It has several components to it, each of which uses mathematics in contemporary and challenging ways. Our job is to find reasonable solutions to the problems generated by those components.

• financial data
• video
• music and sound

The mathematics potentially involved in these areas comes from four sources:

• encryption and decryption are in the domain of algebra
• satellite dishes and orbits are dealt best with by geometry
• sound requires applications of trigonometric functions
• video compression is an application of fractal methods.

Further, aspects of this mathematics requires both accuracy and substantial computations. We will explore software appropriate for these different tasks.

Also, finding solutions will require resources and cooperation. The Internet may be an effective resource as well as the library and other people. The latter implies that teamwork is sometimes a crucial factor in projects.