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Improvising Around A Disaster
The first of the U.S. Air Force’s AEHF (Advanced Extremely High Frequency) communications satellite was launched on August 14th. It achieved its initial orbit, but then it was discovered that its main maneuvering rocket, needed to get the six ton satellite into its permanent fixed, 36,000 kilometer, orbit, was not working. Efforts to get the main engine going failed. The engineers then went to work and found a way to use the lower thrust maneuvering rockets to still the AEHF bird into position. But the alternate method will be slower, and take about nine months. That’s a small price to pay for a satellite that is supposed to last 14 years, once you get it in the right position. AEHFs will replace the older MILSTAR birds, providing more abundant and reliable (jam-resistant) communications. Two more AEHFs are under construction, with one going up next year and another in 2012. Several more will be ordered if the first three (costing about $2.2 billion each) perform as expected. The cost of the first three includes development costs, so additional ones will cost less than half as much.
While the AEHF are mainly to facilitate communications between headquarters in the United States and troops abroad, they are also up there to deal with the huge increase in wireless devices the troops are using. For example, the number of military radios has nearly tripled, to over 900,000, in the last decade. There has also been a huge increase in data transmission capability (“bandwidth”) from 46 megabits (million bits) per second in late 2001, to nearly ten giga (billion) bits per second now. This is just for troops in CENTCOM (the Middle East and Afghanistan). That’s 200 times more data being pushed through three times as many “wireless devices” (radios). This doesn’t even count the many cell phones and laptops used by troops in the combat zone, which often use civilian bandwidth. But it hasn’t been enough.
The major consumer of all this new bandwidth is live video being generated by the increasing number of vidcams on the battlefield. These vids are being exchanged by the units cooperating in an operation. This huge growth in bandwidth began in the 1990s, when the U.S. armed forces moved to satellite communications in a big way. This made sense, especially where troops often have to set up shop in out of the way places and need a reliable way to keep in touch with nearby forces on land and sea, as well as bases and headquarters back in the United States. At the time of the 1991 Gulf War, there was enough satellite bandwidth in the Persian Gulf for about 1,300 simultaneous phone calls. Or, 12 megabits per second. But while the military has a lot more satellite capacity now (the exact amount is a secret), demand has increased even faster. UAV reconnaissance aircraft use enormous amounts of satellite capacity. The Global Hawk needed 500 megabits per second, and Predators about half as much. The major consumer of bandwidth is the live video.
UAVs have other sensors as well, as do aircraft. A voice radio connection only takes about 240 bytes per second, and each of the multiple channels needed to control the UAVs use about the same. But it adds up, especially since the military wants high resolution video. At the moment, the U.S. has far more demand for satellite communications than it can support. As a result, not all the Predator and Global Hawk UAVs in combat zones have sufficient bandwidth to send their video back to the United States. Data compression and using lower resolution is often necessary, or using satellite substitutes (aircraft carrying transponders) to send the video to local users. The substitutes are becoming more common, simply because there is neither the money, nor the time, to get sufficient satellites into orbit.
While the larger UAVs need satcomm to send video back to the United States, most of the bandwidth demand now is for local use. Tanks, helicopters and aircraft are all sending and receiving more vids, maps and data of all sorts. AEHF is needed to get essential material to higher headquarters as quickly as possible. The basic idea is to keep everyone connected, all the time. More radios, and other wireless devices are on the way, as well as more features any Internet user would recognize, all available while under fire. AEHF is an essential link in this data chain.
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Newtec with Iraqi satellite broadcaster Alsumaria
Such is the case for Newtec with Iraqi satellite broadcaster Alsumaria — that company has reached the third stage of its investment in Newtec’s modulation equipment with DualFlow™ and FlexACM® technologies, as part of its migration towards tapeless news production. Since 2004, Alsumaria has established itself as one of the most dynamic and popular broadcasters in Iraq. The latest stage of its infrastructure project involves the installation of DualFlow and FlexACM in its fleet of DSNG units for increased productivity, faster delivery of news content and reduced costs. Alsumaria’s fleet can now deliver live transmission of MPEG-4 over IP, with the dual capability of switching to ASI when required, thanks to DualFlow. Staff can also achieve file transfers and downloads between the DSNG units and the production centre, increasing speed of response to unfolding events. DualFlow technology further increases the productivity of DSNG crews by enabling VoIP connection with the studio, together with e-mail and broadband Internet. Alsumaria’s implementation of Newtec’s FlexACM in its DSNG fleet gives the broadcaster an extended reach in the satellite footprint, with five occasional use slots achieved in only 4MHz. The modems with FlexACM functionality allow high speed file transfers between the DSNG and the studio/playout/editing site. The Newtec EL810 Mobile PEP-Box® Terminal was added to achieve file transfers adding compression and real broadband experience.
Alsumaria’s homepage…DualFlow modems give Alsumaria TV the ability to deliver MPEG-4 live streaming and to store and forward video files. The Newtec solution provides comprehensive control of the quality of service and higher dedicated throughput than traditional VSAT (shared MF-TDMA) systems, together with lower delay, higher availability and better throughput. DualFlow allows broadcasters to transport IP over satellite in the most efficient way, either separately or in combination with traditional ASI live streams on the same carrier. DualFlow supports both IP and ASI interfaces, allowing broadcasters to make the transition to IP connectivity at any time. When used on a modem, DualFlow fully enables two-way IP interactivity over satellite, making it possible to introduce new services into the broadcast workflows, such as real-time interviews, VoIP coordination channels, file upload and download, and remote access to tapeless production infrastructures. By turning DSNG vans into remote offices, DualFlow increases the productivity of the remote teams.
Using Satellite Internet Software
You might discover the most appeal of a vacation house in its out-of-the-way location and quiet environment. At the same time, you may not be capable to kiss the world at big goodbye all time you require a break. In places where the customary cable lines don’t go, you’ll discover yourself seeking for solutions in internet and TV. Satellite broadband is possibly the easiest method to handle the internet, while satellite TV wants small introduction as a solid service for people absent from cable lines.
A High Speed Internet Service without Wires
Whilst it may look similar to a viable concept for city-wide mobile internet plans in the city, the idea of satellite internet service is often hard for people to grasp. Since the connections around cities function with hotspots or towers channeling a signal, you can’t obtain here in a remote location. At this tip, you will require to have a satellite dish to obtain the signal needed for high speed service. It might be a small scary for some people to picture getting a dish on the roof for internet, other than it is no dissimilar from the extremely general satellite television packages.
The dissimilarity with satellite broadband is the place where the dish connects a house PC. One time the communication is sent to the satellite hovering near the equator, an entrance is contacted for information from the internet. Here is an inherent delay in this procedure, since a satellite has to resend the information back to a house computer to create it work. Nonetheless, for people who require high speed internet right to use other than are method off the grid, this microscopic wait time has proven to be not much of a problem.
The New King of house Entertainment
Whilst it may have taken a few years to catch on, here is not much to argument the primary part satellite television has taken in modern house entertainment solutions. You can observe the impact by simply noting how a lot of homes with right to use to cable lines have selected to go with satellite service. Much similar to a satellite internet link, this service guarantees a wealth of programming that could just not create it to your television set or else. You can be watching a TV show from Latin America one minute and turn over over to a soccer game from Australia moments shortly. For sports fans, a lot of satellite subscribers switched over when they found out they could observe all of their favorite teams’ games.
Of course, you possibly didn’t plan to go to a vacation house to just have high speed internet and dynamic TV programming, let without help to a location far out in the country or in the mountains. Using the satellite internet link on it’s possess could be a method to stay linked plus have some entertainment options at your disposal. While it doesn’t match up to the large screen experience, watching some shows on a house computer via the internet can positively do the job in a pinch.