AUGUST - 2023AEROSPACEDEFENSEREVIEW.COM8In My OpinionTECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCES TO EVOLVE SATELLITE COMMUNICATIONS AT A FASTER PACEBy Michael Simon, Ph.D., MBA, VP CAES Advanced Technology & EngineeringHistory has shown that companies and defence communities that are committed to investing in and accelerating new technology development will ultimately dominate the market and the battlespace respectively. This truth is especially relevant today in the satellite communications (SATCOM) domain, where a revolution is occurring. Gone are the days when communication links were limited to Geosynchronous Earth Orbit (GEO) satellites with per-user data rates and latencies of 10 megabits per second and one second respectively. Now, the user demand for ever-increasing bandwidth has become insatiable, necessitation rapid adoption of technological change. Technologies fielded today run the risk of becoming stale in several years. Because they require the fewest terrestrial assets, offer the lowest latency, have global reach, and can be refreshed on multi-year cycles much faster than terrestrial communication infrastructure assets and GEO spacecraft, Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite constellations are the best means to rapidly develop and insert new global reach communications technologies.SATCOM technologies are now progressing so fast that one small satellite supporting thousands of beams with many thousands of user terminals and latency lower than terrestrial fiber is possible. Where traditionally, the space industry has adopted little risk tolerance, what is now required to achieve this ubiquitous communication vision on the part of the companies funding LEO constellations, is the acceptance of reasonable risk to leapfrog next-generation capabilities and achieve next-next generation capabilities. Companies that can accept this reasonable risk will be first to market with next-next generation capabilities and capture the largest market share. Likewise, defense communities that can accept this reasonable risk will be first-to-field, providing marked strategic and tactical advantages. This assurance of multi-year technology insertion provides a business and investment case for payload providers to perform payload technology incremental research and development (R&D) to raise the Technology Readiness Level (TRL) for promising technologies as quickly as possible from low TRLs of 1 to 3 up to TRL 6 and test flight readiness.Next-generation technologies that are already on the cusp of incorporation are advanced node Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) constructed from 5 nanometer (nm) and 7nm processes to support extremely high throughput of terabits per second and ultra-low power beamformers. Also being fielded are laser-based Optical Intersatellite Links (OISLs), and Optical interconnects from Field Programmable Gate Arrays and ASICs to OISLs each with terabits per second throughput.One can therefore envision a next-next generation end state where SATCOM payloads include even more technological Michael Simon
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