An ALL.SPACE smart terminal mounted on a military vehicle. (Source: ALL.SPACE)
One reason is that they’re not parabolic antennas.
Most industry standards for satellite terminals that cover antenna functions, such as Open-AMIP/BMIP, are based upon the legacy scenario in which a single-purpose parabolic antenna is controlled by a single modem.
Electronically Steerable Arrays (ESA), on the other hand, use an entirely different model to support many different modern use cases, especially those involving mobility. ESAs enable combinations of multi-orbit, multi-beam, multi-band operations, meaning standards and architectures determined by parabolics simply don’t work.
This “multi-, multi-, multi-” capability drives the case for integration with digital ground systems to efficiently package and switch between different modems and applications quickly, something that can be done easily in a digital ground system with virtualized modems… especially if the pieces can talk to each other seamlessly and work in an orchestrated way. Without that, the problem of vendor lock-in remains.
To address this much needed challenge, the Digital IF Interoperability (DIFI) Consortium has launched a new effort to develop an interoperability standard for flat panel ESAs. Multiple aspects will be considered over time, from seemingly simple things like defining signal levels in the digital domain to the more complex, such as differences between small form factors and enterprise use cases, which have different driving requirements.
The new DIFI-ESA Working Group will hold its first organizational meeting this month during the Satellite 2024 Conference in Washington, D.C. Jeremy Turpin, Chief Scientist at ALL.SPACE will chair the group, which already includes participation from organizations including All.Space, Bascom Hunter, ETL, Kratos, Kymeta, STE iDirect, Systems Technologies, Viasat and Wavestream. If you are interested in participating in the ESA Working Group (even if not attending Satellite 2024) please visit https://dificonsortium.org/join-now/ for more information on this and other DIFI working groups. If your organization is not yet a DIFI member, that same link will help you join. I encourage any organization with an interest in this very important topic to reach out.
