This paper discusses on‐board processing systems and associated benefits including connectivity, increased capacity, lower costs and system improvements; there are complex trade‐offs in design approaches. Several architectures are described which use a microwave switch matrix, a baseband switch matrix or baseband processor. Regeneration (an advanced form of on‐board processing) consists of demodulation followed by remodulation and provides access to baseband signals. The link advantages of this method are clearly presented for 120Mb/s TDMA and for IBS at 1/544 Mb/s. Additionally, there are discussions of five architectures using multi‐carriers per transponder, and their advantages and disadvantages. Some considerations of using on‐board decoding and baseband processing functions are also briefly presented.