Command to go

Whether it's AIDS researchers in Africa or soldiers in an Army convoy in Iraq, they connect to their headquarters the same way: via satellite communication systems.

In just the last two years, portable satellite antennas, or Very Small Aperture Terminals (VSAT), have become the primary systems for communications on the go.

Smaller satellite dishes are just one of the factors fueling the explosive growth of mobile satellite communications. Another is the availability of land-based gateways and teleports that can interface with satellites. And orbiting satellites play an important role as well.

"It's having the right satellites with the right coverage; that's the key element to anything," said David Fields, vice president of technical operations for satellite communications company Americom Government Services Inc. "If you don't have the right satellite with the right footprint, power levels and operating characteristics, then it wouldn't matter how good the technology is on the ground."

Americom designs, launches and flies satellites, and its core capabilities rest on that infrastructure. The McLean, Va., company has Defense Department customers, as well as customers from the Drug Enforcement Agency, Federal Aviation Administration, State Department and others.

The field of companies in the mobile satellite market is large and growing, said Darren Corbiere, a senior aerospace defense analyst with Frost & Sullivan.

Programs such as the Joint Tactical Radio System and Blue Force Tracking are driving the demand for network connections at the edge of the battlefield, he said.
"All of these technologies are coalescing and increasing the demand for SatCom on the move," Corbiere said. "What happened at the beginning of the Iraq invasion was the military was seriously outpacing the communications ability to keep up."

Corbiere said he expects demand for satellite solutions to grow dramatically.

"If we look at the potential of this market, we're looking at almost $1 billion over the next five to six years," Corbiere said. "It's going to be slow at first, but it will pick up later on, especially around 2014 and 2015, when we have the satellites in a The Wideband Gapfiller flying" the next generation of defense satellites.

Market convergers

Over the past two years, the structure of services that agencies want has evolved to provision end-to-end solutions, said Steve Anspach, vice president for TeleCommunication Systems Inc.'s Network Solutions Group.

"One of the problems in the past was customers would go out and buy a terminal, then go to a different company and try and acquire bandwidth, then go to a third company to try and find terrestrial circuits," Anspach said.

That led to an end product with a working network. But when problems arose, the finger pointing would start: Whose problem is it? Who does support and service?
An end-to-end solution offers a single point of contact when problems or questions arise.

"I see a definite change in customers wanting to go to a total solution," Anspach said.

But cost of operation is the most powerful force driving the increase in use of small-form factor, end-to-end satellite solutions. Previously, solutions relied on small, inexpensive terminals, but their operating costs were enormous. Not only has new technology reduced costs, it also has helped further shrink the size of VSATs.

TeleCommunications Systems' broadband satellite terminal, the SwiftLink DVM-90, a 0.9-meter Ku-band VSAT module, is lightweight and can be set up in 20 minutes. It ships in two carry-on size containers and features high-bandwidth field communications at IP-data rates from 64 kilobytes per second to 2.4 megabytes per second.

The terminal ties into TeleCommunications Systems' commercial Ku-band service, SwiftLink Global Satellite Services. Ku band refers to microwave frequencies, which range from 11 GHz to 17 GHz and are used primarily for satellite communications.

"SwiftLink covers about 80 percent of the globe," Anspach said. But it can reach the remaining 20 percent as well, he said, via interconnection of two teleports, one in Manassas, Va., and one in Baltimore, that the company organically owns.

The company also partners with other teleports in Europe and Australia.

"We've interconnected all those sites through a network structure, so no matter where we downlink your traffic, the presence for a customer getting back to their enterprise is our facility in Manassas," Anspach said.

High-level military customers operating in the Middle East are using the network, he said. That traffic connects to the company's Manassas facility and uses terrestrial links to the military network infrastructure in Washington and Tampa, Fla.
"They have fully protected circuits, fully private circuits, and the cost to the government is very inexpensive," Anspach said.

Push pays off

Military leaders began to see payoffs for the push to get network bandwidth to soldiers in the field during the 2001 launch of Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, said Daniel White, vice president of DataPath Inc., Duluth, Ga.

A deployable Earth terminal that DataPath delivered to the Army shows what is possible.

"When the United States went into Afghanistan, that proved a very valuable solution, as they were moving their forward command posts around and executing their strategy," White said. "This was a transportable unit that was easy to set up, easy to tear down and easy to relocate."

That success led to DataPath's development of a communications-on-the-move prototype vehicle. The Broadband On-the-Move Satellite Communications System links to a satellite connection without stopping the vehicle.

"Comms on the move is the next thing that we think is going to be a big enabler to moving that information closer to the soldier," White said. "What we're talking about is doing it while you're driving down the road or desert at 30 to 50 miles an hour."

With the adoption and success of mobile satellite communication links, opportunities to build IT tools to ride on that infrastructure are on the rise for system integrators and technology companies, said Ed Hammersla, chief operating officer of Trusted Computer Solutions Inc., Herndon, Va.

"The trend is part of the overall desire of getting information down to the warfighter," Hammersla said. "It's a mega trend in the Defense Department that will continue."

Trusted Computer Solutions focuses on cross-domain solutions that let devices simultaneously connect to multiple security domains.

The technology is well suited for forward areas such as Iraq, where nations are operating distinct networks that must be kept separate for security reasons.

As systems integrators and IT companies tackle such projects, Anspach recommended paying close attention to the next generation of technology.

"Because communication capabilities are very demanding from the customer's standpoint, there's a constant drive to be more efficient," he said. That holds "not only for the hardware aspect of the solution, but also for the network aspect of it.

"If you give someone the ability of doing data in the field, then they immediately want voice; if you give them voice, then they want video," Anspach said.

It has been proven that military operations are more effective when greater amount of data are pushed out to the field. System integrators should ensure that process is relatively seamless and easy.

"They have to be looking beyond delivering a single item, they've got to be considering the entire network," Anspach said. "The old days of trying to piecemeal a solution from multiple sources just doesn't apply."

Staff Writer Doug Beizer can be reached at dbeizer@postnewsweektech.com.