POWER SAVING DEVICE AND POWER SAVING METHOD FOR ULTRA-COMPACT EARTH STATION

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a power saving device and power saving method for an ultra-compact earth station that are able to save power by intermittent reception during reception standby in a satellite communication system in which a center station and a plurality of ultra-compact earth stations perform communication via a communication satellite.SOLUTION: A power saving device for an ultra-compact earth station comprises: supervisory control data receiving unit which receives supervisory control data transmitted from a center station toward a plurality of ultra-compact earth stations, and calculates multi-frame length from the supervisory control data; a power supply monitoring unit which monitors the residual quantity of a battery mounted on the ultra-compact earth station and outputs a signal indicating the residual quantity of the battery; a traffic monitoring unit which monitors traffic amount and outputs a signal indicating the traffic amount; and a reception mode control unit which, when its ultra-compact earth station shifts its mode, receives a frame destined to the own ultra-compact earth station by supplying power at a time interval according to the residual amount of the battery, or a time interval according to the traffic amount, or a time interval determined by taking both into consideration, and at a time interval integer multiple of the multi-frame length.