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CETel Upgrades Trunking Service to Africa and Middle East With Newtec FlexACM(R) Technology
Global provider of teleport and satellite services CETel has enhanced its IP trunking services to Africa and the Middle East with Newtec Elevation modulators, shapers and encapsulators. CETel has upgraded its DVB-S2/SCPC links from Ruppichteroth, Germany to seven remote sites in Somalia, Sudan, Cape Verde, Ghana and Iraq, together with other point-to-point and point-to-multipoint networks from Germany to Africa and the Middle Eastern region.
CETel has also installed Newtec’s EL170 IP Satellite Modulator, EL970 IP Satellite Demodulator equipment based on FlexACM(R) technology enabling advanced and most efficient output for broadband Internet services for a major telecommunication provider in Africa. CETel chose Newtec’s DVB-S2 FlexACM technology to reduce bandwidth costs and increase revenue.
“The installation of the Newtec infrastructure has been the culmination of our drive to deliver higher quality and greater efficiency in our services,” says Sergey Raber, Director Operations, CETel. “With the implementation of FlexACM, we can now achieve far more with our bandwidth, and guarantee availability of the link under conditions that would otherwise have caused a service failure. This increased efficiency has resulted in a return on investment within a few months of operation.”
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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Dubai’s eye high in the sky
In a small room on the outskirts of Dubai at the Emirates Institute for Advanced Science and Technology (EIAST), a large television screen shows a countdown in seconds.
Other screens show an array of maps, sensor readings and other mathematical data.
This is mission control for DubaiSat-1. The satellite, which was launched in July last year, is the Emirates’ first remote imaging satellite and one of the major projects in the UAE’s emerging space industry.
In a few seconds, the satellite will cross over the Gulf and provide a window for engineers to download important image data. As the satellite orbits 690km above Earth, time is of the essence.
Back on Earth, Salem Humaid al Marri, the space programme project manager for EIAST, walks over to a computer monitor that displays raw images from the satellite in basic black and white.
“Ah, it’s no good,” he says, pointing at a group of seemingly innocuous white dots next to what appears to be the cluster of man-made islands called the World.
“See that? Those are clouds. Any obstruction ruins the image and we can’t really use them.”
Apart from when someone is trying to locate their house, satellite imagery may not seem interesting. But each image can be analysed in a variety of ways, giving users including scientists and urban planners a bird’s-eye view of what is going on.
After its launch from Baikonur in Kazakhstan, DubaiSat-1 was immediately put to work beaming down images of Dubai. UAE universities have used imagery from the satellite for such purposes as monitoring shoreline erosion.
The satellite is a geek’s dream, filled with space-ready gadgets such as accelerometers, gyroscopes, antennas, cameras and solar energy panels.
Surprisingly, the on-board computer that manages camera imagery data is 15 years old, and the processor is just powerful enough to perform key tasks.
While providing satellite imagery to the Dubai Government is the main business of DubaiSat-1, commercial applications are being discovered. Mr al Marri points out that companies are increasingly approaching EIAST to request certain images as well as leasing time on the institute’s terrestrial antenna in case there is immediate need for data from another satellite orbiting over Dubai.
“Our goal is not to go commercial, but if there’s a chance to commercialise our data, it’s a bonus. Our goal is to serve the government needs in terms of what the municipality wants,” Mr al Marri says. “But if you’re dedicated to commercialisation and you’ve got a satellite, you can make a lot of money.”
For now, the US$50 million (Dh183.7m) satellite project is a vital part of the UAE’s space plans in what is expected to be a major industry in the Emirates during the next 20 years.
The UAE already has Thuraya, a telecommunications company with two orbiting satellites relaying voice and broadband data. The company plans next year to launch Yahsat, an internet and television satellite aimed at covering the Middle East and Africa.
Aabar Investments, which is owned by the Abu Dhabi Government, has also moved into the space business. The company has taken a 32 per cent stake in Virgin Group’s commercial space enterprise, Virgin Galactic, at a cost of about $280m and holds the exclusive regional rights for any Virgin spaceport that is to be built here.
“If you look at the UAE in terms of the region, it’s one of the most advanced economies when it comes to space technology,” Mr al Marri says, adding that the future for the DubaiSat programme is bright. Two more satellites are scheduled to be added to EIAST’s fleet during the next five years, with the second to be built entirely in Dubai.
The new satellites will have better picture resolution, greater data transmission capacity and propulsion systems to allow mission control to change their orbits.
“The main aspect of the DubaiSat project was technology transfer,” Mr al Marri says. “For the first model, we sent … engineers to South Korea and they worked on all aspects of the satellite from design to launch. So we’re trying to gain these skills and give UAE nationals the opportunity to come back to Dubai and build better satellites.”