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ViaSat gives war effort a boost
Airplanes passing silently over enemy territory in Iraq and Afghanistan record and transmit videos in real time back to intelligence experts in the United States with the help of Carlsbad satellite communications company ViaSat.
Because those videos help inform military decisions, picture quality is extremely important, said Larry Taylor, the head of Government Satellite Communications Systems at the company.
To boost the resolution and speed of these videos, ViaSat recently doubled the data rate its equipment can transmit, from 512 to 1024 kilobytes. This upgrade was made at the request of the Department of Defense, one of the company’s biggest customers, Taylor said.
The company also recently improved military planes’ ability to send data back to the ground.
“Traditionally when we think of Internet access, we think about a simple mouse-click to load a complex Web page, which is a lot of data going out to a remote facility, but very little coming back,” Taylor said. “But with the Department of Defense, they are actually creating the data as videos or other intelligence information collected on an airplane, and that information has to be relayed to analysis centers on the ground.”
Giving an airplane a wireless connection is like hitting a moving target, because the plane’s antennas are never in the same place. ViaSat accomplishes this task with a network of 13 hubs on the ground connected to 13 satellites, which create a “worldwide footprint” of wireless connection, Taylor said.
Boosting the planes’ data speed will allow them to send videos with higher resolution and more frames per second, both of which are important for military intelligence activities, Taylor said. Greater resolution means the video’s screen can be enlarged without creating a pixilated, or blurry, image, and increasing a video’s frames makes it smoother.
Although ViaSat originally only supplied its satellite connection technology to commercial vehicles, including business jets and trains, the Department of Defense asked the company to adapt its technology to military airplanes.
ViaSat’s satellite antenna and software are installed in more than 100 military aircraft and more than 100 business aircraft, Taylor said. The company is also expanding its reach into boats, and plans to have software in more than 750 maritime craft soon.
The average cost to equip military planes with the antenna and software to transmit videos is about $350,000, and ViaSat also has government contracts to work on upgrading the planes, he said. The company brings in about $50 million a year between its commercial and military customers, but Taylor said that number is expected to grow.
The company’s data rate from the air to the ground is also expected to grow to 2 megabytes “and beyond,” he said. It plans to transition to higher frequency bands and launch a new satellite next year.
Thuraya Locate – satellite location service
TS2 Satellite Technologies has announced the launch of Thuraya Locate. The service is for people who want their location to be known and shown to family, friends or employers so that they know where the user is, where they have been and when. It is a simple and easy service which allows anyone that you wish to see your location and history using essentially any recent web browser on any current PC.
ThurayaLocate service relies upon Thuraya satellite phones to transmit their GPS location data; hence ThurayaLocate™ operates in all countries where Thuraya satellite phones operate. Currently in satellite mode this represents almost 2/3 of the world’s land surface including Asia, Africa, Europe, Middle East, China, Indonesia, Japan, Korea and Australia. When using a Hughes, Ascom, SG or SO phone the Thuraya Location Services are also available wherever there is an interconnected GSM network, thereby significantly extending the coverage area.
The service works by:
• The Thuraya subscriber registering their handset for the ThurayaLocate™ service via www.thurayalocate.com
• Upon registration, the subscriber will receive a username and password to access the service. The subscriber decides which authorized people they will share the username and password with.
• After registering, the user acquires their GPS position using the standard features available on Thuraya handsets.
• This information is then sent manually via SMS to the ThurayaLocate operations center.
• The authorized parties log on to the website with the subscriber username and password.
• The web browser displays the handset location using maps, satellite images and aerial photography made available via Google Maps or Windows Virtual Earth.
ThurayaLocate™ is designed for:
Backpackers letting friends and family see where they are and where they’ve been
Outdoor adventurers – skiers, hikers, mountain bikers, climbers, canoeists, coastal and oceanic sailors
Balloonists, paragliders and light aviation pilots
Fishing fleets, coastal and oceanic cargo ships, water taxis, ferries, river and cruise boats
Long distance drivers, truckers and courier companies
Government ministers and staff on overseas assignments
Corporate clients working in remote locations
Oil/gas/mineral exploration teams
Pipeline, road, rail and GSM network construction teams
Overland travel companies, tourist coaches, 4×4 rally enthusiasts
World Bank, United Nations and agencies working in developing markets
Disaster relief agencies – forest fire, flood, tsunami, earthquake
Anyone travelling and working in off-the-beaten-track locations who wants friends, family and/or their employer to know where they are.
TS2 specializes in providing global satellite access services. Our core business is broadband access to the Internet in areas with poor telecommunications infrastructure and mobile satellite phones communication. The main medium of used transmission is a two-way satellite transfer system, which provides good access to the satellite network in even the least accessible areas. It not only provides a broadband connection but also a wide range of additional data and voice services.
Before end of 2007 year, the TS2 solutions have been implemented for e.g. US Marine Corps (USMC), US Army Corps of Engineers, Australian Defence Force (ADF), Command of Polish Navy, Special Military Formation GROM, 1st Special Commando Regiment, Polish National Police, Polish National Headquarters of the State Fire Services, Border Guard (Poland), World Bank Group, Lockheed Martin Information Technology, Halliburton Energy Services, KBR, General Dynamics Information Technology, General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc., L-3 Communications Vertex Aerospace, US Naval Research Laboratory, ITT Corporation Aerospace / Communications Division, Technest Holdings / EOIR Technologies, North Eastern Aeronautical Company (Neany), EchoStorm Worldwide, Jorge Scientific Corporation, Erinys International, Aegis Iraq, American Heart of Poland and more others.
TS2 Satellite Technologies http://www.ts2.pl
DARPA eyes space-based Internet for persistent battlefield data communications, surveillance, and satellite control
Satellite communications experts at the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in Arlington, Va., are taking the next step in developing broadband data communications links to orbiting satellite constellations, not only to establish persistent SATCOM capability for fighting forces in the field, but also to enable real-time control of satellites from military theaters of operation.
The ability to control clusters of satellites from military theaters of operation like Iraq and Afghanistan not only could help establish predictable, round-the-clock satellite communications links for forward-deployed warfighters, but also has the potential to help establish controllable, persistent surveillance capability for the military commanders in the field who need it most.
DARPA awarded an $18 million research contract Friday to Inmarsat plc in London for the Persistent Broadband Ground Connectivity for Spacecraft in Low Earth Orbit program, which seeks to enable near-24/7, very-low-latency, on-demand broadband connectivity between ground satellite terminals and spacecraft in low earth orbit (LEO).
This capability could help establish a persistent communications system for LEO satellites for time-sensitive spacecraft control for defense maneuvers, rapid transmission of critical mission data such as space weather events, direct-from-theater control of spacecraft, and direct-to-theater data delivery with a small ground-based transceiver.
Researchers from DARPA and Inmarsat will use the Broadband Global Area Network (BGAN) service from Inmarsat’s I-4 satellite communications constellation to help develop and demonstrate technology for this program. The BGAN service is the fastest mobile data link available that uses a portable terminal and offers on-demand connectivity with global coverage that could extend to LEO orbital altitudes, DARPA officials say.
The BGAN network, which serves land-based, shipboard, and aircraft satellite communications, provides 492-kilobit-per-second full-duplex, full-channel bandwidth over about 600 spot beams with 588 channels per beam.
A space-based BGAN terminal for LEO use appears to be technically feasible by making modest adaptations to the airborne terminal involving Doppler compensation, radiation hardened components, and software changes for rapid beam-to-beam handover without loss of service, DARPA officials say.
For the Persistent Broadband Ground Connectivity for Spacecraft in Low Earth Orbit program, Inmarsat engineers will design a space-based BGAN terminal, modify the BGAN, perform hardware-in-the-loop tests of a space-based BGAN terminal, and integrate the space-based BGAN terminal with the System F6 fractionated spacecraft demonstration cluster.