Yesterday, on Government Technology Insider, Tampa Microwave President, Aaron Brosnan, discussed the challenges disparate, stove-piped satellite networks and ground terminals pose to the U.S. Department of Defense’s goal of leveraging multi-orbit, multi-band SATCOM.
Aaron returns to GTI to give insight into how industry is coming together to solve these challenges, and to take a deep dive into new technologies and applications that are modernizing the DoD’s ground systems and SATCOM capabilities.
Government Technology Insider (GTI): How are the challenges behind disparate and stove-piped satellite network systems being solved? What new technologies, applications, and ground systems are being developed that are making this possible?
Aaron Brosnan: First, there’s been a big push towards virtualizing waveforms, so that software-defined architectures can be implemented in terminal design. From there, we can simply host those waveforms as software, as opposed to now, where we have to implement a hardware-based waveform. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers-Industry Standards and Technology Organization (IEEE-ISTO) has established a consortium called WAVE (Waveform Architecture for Virtualized Ecosystems), where industry is currently coming together to help standardize the future implementation of a virtualized waveform architecture.
Electronically steered arrays (ESAs) have also been pivotal in changing how the ground segment rolls between satellites. ESAs are antennas that are an array of emitters in a flat panel. They use phase shifting to steer beams electronically, rather than mechanically, which is extremely efficient and high performing for NGSO satellite tracking. The high-speed tracking and high-speed handover that ESAs provide are essential to modern warfighting missions and cannot be achieved mechanically.
To achieve multi-band capabilities, there’s definitely work that needs to be done on the antenna side, as antennas are traditionally optimized for single-band operation. But there has been great progress in ESAs that can cover at least two different bands. In today’s market, we’re seeing the implementation and adoption of that technology into future terminal designs.
The second piece of it is how to shape, control, and steer the beams. When you operate over a single band, it’s a little easier. There are already terminals today where ESAs implement single-band operations. The sweet spot is where we can develop a single terminal that can cover both Ku and Ka. I think within the next 12 to 24 months, we are going to start to see new terminal designs come out that are at least Ku/Ka capable in a single terminal.
GTI: There has been robust use across military formations of parabolic SATCOM terminals. Do you see this technology being replaced by new ESA antennas or do you see a use for both capabilities?
Aaron Brosnan: Military customers have indicated that they need options to communicate depending on their mission, formation type and even their area of operations. This could be a mix of ESA and advanced parabolic terminal technology. ESAs are not meant to replace a parabolic SATCOM terminal. I think they both provide a purpose, but the lines do admittedly get blurred when determining if parabolic should be used versus an ESA. That’s healthy, and I think there are always different views on which is better for which application and there will most likely be a place for both systems in military formations
With that said, parabolics are probably not optimized for NGSO. But with multi-orbit upgrade kits, we can do it. For example, Tampa Microwave’s traditional parabolic terminals have just been certified on SES’s O3b mPOWER MEO constellation. Thanks to the fact that our terminals are modular in design, we can perform field upgrades on our existing terminals. They don’t have to come back to our facility. Through a field upgrade, we can remove a manual gear head in the terminal design and replace it with an electronic auto-positioner. This is a very viable and affordable option for many of our military customers. They have invested a lot in their fielded terminals, and we don’t want them to throw those away to get to a multi-orbit solution. Field upgrades are an option.
For on-the-move missions, information superiority is critical, but portability and maneuverability are vital too. SATCOM services can’t be static. Terminals need to be maneuverable, mounted on vehicles, and able to perform while on-the-move. While traditional parabolic terminals have filled that role in the past, ESA’s speed of tracking and handover is critical. I think for the foreseeable future, it’s going to be a balance. It’s going to be a hybrid architecture where parabolics will be used when portability is important, but performance is even more important. ESAs or flat panel arrays will be used where a maneuverability on-the-move capability is driving a mission.
GTI: Are there advancements in parabolic terminal technology allowing for commercial constellation connectivity?
Aaron Brosnan: When we talk about commercial, we typically are talking about NGSO satellites. But the fact is that for many years there have been GEO commercial satellites – like Viasat, Inmarsat, Intelsat and others – where parabolics have been and are operating on. There have been great advances in those commercial, GEO constellations as well, such as high-throughput satellites (HTS). With a high-energy spot beam, even a GEO satellite can give you really high throughput. Inmarsat’s Global Xpress and Intelsat Flex are two examples. Tampa Microwave’s legacy parabolic terminals can operate over those services, as well as our portfolio of ESAs from Get SAT.
Other advancements include operating parabolic terminals that will incorporate tracking and positioners, allowing them to ride on NGSO satellites. ESA technology, such as flat panels, rapid tracking, rapid switching, and waveform virtualization, will also be crucial in the future for a pervasive, connect-anywhere satellite architecture.
GTI: Where will this go in the future? Do you envision a future scenario where military satellite users can simply point an antenna at the sky and get comms from any satellite, regardless of band, orbit, or whether it’s a military or commercial satellite?
Aaron Brosnan: That is exactly what our soldiers are asking for! We, in industry, need to aspire to that. It’s critical to multi-domain, unified network operations. Stove pipes in our network architectures do not support unified network operations, so we need to have options and diversity in our transport layer. Our terrestrial network connectivity is pretty robust and enables pervasive, connect-anywhere, on-the-move terrestrial connectivity. But let’s extend that. The whole idea of the hybrid space architecture now extends into space. We need to have celestial path diversity, so that we have many more paths available to us in a more resilient network in space.
It’s important to give fighting forces high performance, resilience, and assured BLOS, transport connectivity. It’s critical to our ability to achieve information overmatch against an adversary. But it’s more than just adopting the latest technology such as ESA and waveform virtualization. It’s also about how industry comes together with the military and develops standards. How do we collaborate so that we can ensure that we are creating standards that will enable seamless movement between different networks? And that’s definitely where we’re headed.