On Wednesday, September 8, SATELLITE held the “Reducing Ground Infrastructure Costs in the New Space Supply-Chain” session, where Leaf Space, IT’s U.S. Managing Director, Jai Dialani, moderated a panel discussion that included:

• Assaf Cohen, Global Vice President Sales and Marketing, SpaceBridge Inc.
• Stuart Daughtridge, Vice President, Kratos
• Paul Mattear, Principal Business Development Manager, Amazon Web Services
• Sergy A. Mummert, Senior Vice President, Business Development, Americas, SES
• Richard Schgallis, Executive Vice President, Space and Communications USA, Safran Data Systems

There is always constant speculation about the “future” of the space economy, and how it will include increased demands for satellite services and capabilities, higher speeds, and ubiquitous access. But the experts on this panel explained that these high demands already exist and will only be growing larger in the coming years. But, there is one huge roadblock standing in the way to satisfying these needs.

Over the past decade, the technological improvements that have taken place in the space layer have been monumental. According to Daughtridge, these technological advancements have equipped software defined satellites with “unbelievable capabilities.” And the wide array of missions that the space layer can support are vast. Today’s satellites have the ability to enable orbital transport, Earth observation, IoT, broadband communications, and cislunar missions.

According to Schgallis, “We are rapidly approaching this point where systems will become multi-mission capable, with higher and higher data rates, and multi-band terminals…There’s this goal to make things as widely compatible for economies of scale as possible.”

“The ground segment needs to catch up to basically enable those capabilities that have been put in the spacecraft.” – Stuart Daughtridge

The issue that is preventing the deployment of these services is that the ground segment systems meant to direct and control these satellite missions are years behind in their own development, rendering a satellite’s potential capabilities untapped and unused.

And this untapped space layer potential can translate into major losses for satellite providers. “The ground segment’s behind,” said Daughtridge. “The ground segment needs to catch up to basically enable those capabilities that have been put in the spacecraft. Because right now, it’s really hard to monetize the capabilities that those satellites have.”

In other words, it doesn’t matter how great a satellite is if the ground segment can’t support it. So what can be done to catch these ground segments up?

According to Mattear, “One of the issues that we have with ground infrastructure is a lack of standards across the board.” As the satellite industry continues to move towards utilizing more partner-developed software defined systems, there must be a standard that they can develop towards. “Otherwise, you end up with a single stovepipe system,” said Mattear. “And that stovepipe system doesn’t let you monetize.”

The consequences from the lack of interoperability spread far beyond satellite providers. The U.S. military is working to embrace a combined MILSATCOM and COMSATCOM architecture that will deliver the increased satellite bandwidth they need for today’s network-enabled operations, and give them access to the innovation of the commercial satellite industry. However, the lack of interoperability in ground networks and hardware is making this combined architecture difficult to achieve.

“One of the issues that we have with ground infrastructure is a lack of standards across the board.” – Paul Mattear

According to Frank Backes, senior vice president for Federal Space at Kratos, “Unfortunately, multiple organizations independently pursuing their own mission needs have produced a number of ground-based proprietary satellite communication solutions, which have created a lack of interoperability between different commercial services and the armed forces. Those same proprietary solutions remain roadblocks to a dynamic SATCOM infrastructure supporting communication for an evolving military theater.”

Through standardization, satellite and ground system providers would be able to implement solutions and services that would reduce ground infrastructure costs, and, according to Mattear, “allow that to be monetized by other customers, help that symbiotic chain generate revenue across the board, and more importantly, support the end customer.”

But how does that standardization happen? All the panelists agreed that virtualization and digitization, like moving towards cloud technologies, are key.

According to Mummert digitization and virtualization are not only game changers in reducing ground infrastructure costs, but they also provide opportunities for new service models. “Having more infrastructure distributed across a global network, like AWS…is really a game changer for the satellite operators.”

With the promises of being able to move a lot of the work into cloud environments, and making the access compatible, no matter where the customer is, is “opening up a lot of doors” according to Schgallis. “I’m very excited about these opportunities, and our organization is actively working in this vein with as much virtualization and cloud processing as possible.”

Virtualization also accelerates the move from purpose-built hardware to mission unique software. “In software applications, especially in a cloud environment where you can spin up service chains and things like that, you can get the resiliency and the scalability that a cloud offers,” explained Daughtridge. “It allows you to have flexibilities for multiple different missions, with the same basic generic hardware, because you can change the personality of the infrastructure.”

Implementing these service models, through virtualization, means that satellite provider customers who are used to consuming cloud resources in the terrestrial world, can now have access to them via satellite. “The model makes sense to them,” said Mummert. “The interoperability is very important to them. It just enables a whole new ecosystem and economy.”

“We want standards. We want to drive scale for the industry. I think this is the right direction, but it needs more work. But we’ll get there.” – Sergy Mummert

But this does pose a challenge for ground segment developers, such as panelist Assaf Cohen. According to Cohen, “From the ground segment perspective…we have a lot of complexities. We have to deal with many new technologies with many orbits.” He explained that the challenges lie within developing the software to cope with all of the hardware challenges.

“We have to be interoperable,” explained Cohen. “To connect all these dots and implement the standards, we are an integral part and not just the one supporting the network.” He went on to say that the challenges get even more complicated because everything must become interoperable in real time.

To remedy these challenges, several groups have popped up within the industry to support a standardization dialogue. And Mummert happens to be on one of them. “We want standards,” said Mummert. “We want to drive scale for the industry. I think this is the right direction, but it needs more work. But we’ll get there.”

In the end, all of the issues of standardization and virtualization comes down to the partner ecosystem coming together to solve these immense challenges. According to Mummert, when industry partners cross-collaborate, “You open up these doors and create interoperability and opportunities for things to be created on your platform.”

The post How ground segment systems are rendering innovative satellite capabilities useless appeared first on SES Space and Defense.

One of those innovative satellite companies that we’ve been watching with much enthusiasm over the past few years is Kymeta – a communications company that is completing the connectivity fabric and poised to disrupt their industry. Kymeta’s products and services have immense potential to bring satellite communications to a new segment of ground, aero and maritime platforms and vehicles. And the potential use cases for governments and militaries are almost limitless.

That’s why we jumped at the opportunity to sit down with Bill Marks, Kymeta’s Chief Strategy Officer and Executive Vice President, at this year’s SATELLITE 2019. During our discussion we talked about how Kymeta got its start, what differentiates their solutions from others on the market, and how the marriage of Kymeta antennas and MEO satellite constellations could revolutionize an industry.

Here is what Bill had to say:

Government Satellite Report (GSR): Can you give our readers an introduction to Kymeta? How did the company get its start and what is the company producing right now?

Bill Marks: Kymeta was born in 2012, but it really was a spin out from a company called Intellectual Ventures in Seattle, which is an incubator, think tank and patent accumulator. [Intellectual Ventures] was interested and intrigued with the science of metamaterial, which – in its first iterations – was about cloaking and manipulating optical light to make things disappear.

This sparked the interest of a couple of Seattle’s big investors who were behind Intellectual Ventures, including Bill Gates. These investors were enthralled with meta material science, and they bought the patents and technology from Duke University and other research institutions. For a year or so they went around the world and acquired a very large portfolio of patents centered around metamaterials. All told, they acquired more than 150 patents from different universities around the world.

In 2011, [the investors] began to explore commercial options and use cases for this technology. They began to ask, “If you could manipulate optical waves, could you also manipulate radio waves?” That question led to the idea of creating a satellite antenna.

The actual, independent company was formed in August of 2012. Since then, it’s been working on innovating metamaterial-based antenna technologies that will enable an electronically-steerable beam from an antenna with no moving parts.

GSR: What does an antenna like that look like? How does it work?

Bill Marks: It’s an antenna that is roughly 70 centimeters wide and a few centimeters thick.  The active layer of the antenna are two sheets of glass similar to what’s found in liquid crystal displays. The same glass technologies that make iPhones and TV sets possible make our antennas possible.

Within these sheets of glass are pixels – we call them elements – that are spaced out based on the frequency we want to operate in. We pass a wave through a waveguide underneath these [sheets of glass] and we individually activate the [elements] we want to activate to allow the frequency and energy to pass through. We use software to do that, effectively making it a software-defined antenna, and allowing users to steer a beam very quickly.

GSR: How does that speed benefit the user? Why is a software-defined antenna an attractive option for them?

Bill Marks: Let’s say [the user] is driving a car, flying a plane or operating a boat. The beam [generated by a Kymeta antenna] is able to switch from horizon to horizon in 4 milliseconds. The technologies that we’re using are the same technologies that you find in today’s advanced televisions – they have a refresh rate of 240 hertz. So, the speed at which your television can reconfigure to form a picture, we can steer a beam.

This is essential for connecting to satellites while on the move, since the beam can reconfigure or be steered quickly to ensure the signal is never lost or dropped. Also, the antenna is a full duplex antenna capable of transmitting multiple beams. It can form transmit beams and receive beams simultaneously.

GSR: What does it enable users to do that they couldn’t before?

Bill Marks: Because it’s software-defined, there are many things that users can do with this antenna that they can’t do with others. When [users] give [the satellite] power, it will auto-commission and auto-provision to whichever satellite they tell it to. This means that [users] don’t have to send an engineer to install it. Speaking of power, it draws very little. The antenna itself runs on 15 watts of power.

GSR: How does that power consumption compare to the industry average? Why is that good for more mobile use cases?

Bill Marks: A phased array antenna might draw 700 watts of power. It will also generate quite a bit of heat. A Kymeta antenna – by comparison – draws a small fraction of the power and doesn’t generate heat. That’s all due to how the antenna works. It takes very little voltage to make liquid crystals realign.

Also, in comparison to other phased array antennas, there are no moving parts. This is important for mobile platforms and use cases since the antenna is more resilient and robust without having a number of moving parts that can break.

In these use cases, you also want [the antenna] to consume low power because you might not be able to generate a lot of power. You also don’t want it to generate heat since – in military use cases – that could give away troop positions and movement.

We’ve had [a Kymeta] antenna on a 30-foot vessel going fifty knots, and it’s maintained lock the entire time.

GSR: We’re starting to see satellite constellations in MEO and LEO that have extremely low latency, but that have requisite changeovers or handovers as the satellites move around the Earth. How could Kymeta make these satellite constellations more accessible and usable for the military?

Bill Marks: When it comes to satellite communications, you always want to make a new signal before you break an existing signal. To ensure that happens when working with MEO and LEO constellations, you need two parabolic dishes – one parabolic tracking a satellite and another grabbing a new one before you drop the connection on the first one.

With flat panel antennas, you can simply form two beams. They’re both tracking a satellite, but, as it nears the horizon, one of the two will go to grab the new satellite. In contrast to parabolic antennas – of which you would need two – you can truly get by with one flat panel antenna. It will perform the function of two mechanically-steered parabolic antennas.

Unfortunately, all flat antennas – when compared to parabolic antennas – are never as efficient. That’s because you can point a parabolic antenna broadside—right at the source—which would see the whole antenna. This means that you need a slightly larger flat panel to get the same performance as a parabolic antenna. But you’d still only need one. This makes it possible for the military to start bringing the low-latency, high-throughput capability of MEO and LEO satellites to smaller platforms – such as land vehicles.

GSR: Why is this such a good solution for meeting the SATCOM requirements of land vehicles? Is it just the fact that you can effectively perform the same function of two parabolic antennas with one flat panel antenna? And why is land mobility so important for today’s military?

Bill Marks: Land mobility has historically not used satellite because of the parabolic dish. You can’t put them on a train because, when you go through a tunnel, they get knocked off. You can’t put a big dome on a car or another military vehicle because it’s simply not practical.

Flat panel antennas are an elegant solution that can bring satellite to land vehicles. In the case of the connected car, a flat panel antenna can be installed between the roof and the headliner, making it practically invisible to the passenger and effectively turning the roof of the vehicle into the antenna.

In addition to the fact that it’s smaller, the antenna is practically invisible to adversaries. Communications are among the first thing adversaries look to deny. Not being able to identify the antenna keeps the adversary from trying to attack it. Not utilizing much power makes it more portable and easier to power in transit. And the fact that it doesn’t generate much heat makes it less visible to thermal imaging.

Bill Marks: The only antenna that we currently have on the market is a Ku-band antenna. But we do have a Ka-band antenna on our product roadmap and in development. The DoD and multiple other government agencies also want to use our technology with W-band, V-band and other bands. We’re going to let demand drive what bands we build.

We’re working to release a Ka-band antenna in time for the launch of the SES O3b mPOWER constellation. The constellation that SES is putting up is amazing. The O3b mPower satellites are amazing satellites with incredible capacity, and we know that that constellation makes our technology work better. So that’s what we’ve been working towards.

We believe strongly there’s not a lot of opportunities and use cases in the government that can really use that kind of capacity. This is the kind of technology that will change the game and increase the kinds of vehicles and use cases that we can connect with satellite.

The post Why flatter is better – a Q&A with Bill Marks of Kymeta appeared first on SES Space and Defense.