By Peter J. Brown
When it comes to delivering bandwidth in the battlefield, the U.S. military is in what is best described as rapid-recovery mode. The liberation of Kuwait more than a decade ago was accomplished with what is now considered a mere trickle of satellite bandwidth when contrasted to the enormous flood in demand encountered today in support of ongoing operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
And what a difference in the two campaigns. Not only has the satellite bandwidth requirement mushroomed, but Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom represent the first live use of Web-based warfare. Coalition commanders in the field have the ability to communicate using a collaborative software package known as the Information Work Space. The entire network, known as the Combined Enterprise Regional Information Exchange System, constitutes a military communications breakthrough and was in its infancy at the time of the first Gulf War.
While commercial satellite service providers have been able to help meet the demand for bandwidth by U.S. forces, the Department of Defense (DoD) has studied its current dependence upon commercial partners and devised a new set of solutions intended to meet existing requirements as well as to prepare for enhanced Network Centric Warfare (NCW) in the future.
To make true horizontal fusion a reality--which is what NCW enables--a high-bandwidth multimedia cloud must permeate the battlefield, and this can only be made possible by including the resources of a global multi-band satellite network. But all the existing Milstar, UHF Follow-On, which hosts the Global Broadcast Service (GBS), Defense Satellite Communications System (DSCS) and other Pentagon communication assets high overhead are worth very little if the ground segment is not performing as it should or is missing altogether.
DOD Teleports Preparing For Advanced Military Satellite Communications Systems
With the commissioning of the latest teleport in Hawaii in April 2004, the DoD Teleport Program, initiated by the Defense Information System Agency (DISA), now encompasses six sites worldwide. The teleports empower NCW and comprise a vital part of the DoD's transition to the Transformational Communications Architecture. The teleports serve as gateways between the Global Information Grid and warfighters seeking access to the Defense Information System Network (DISN) services using all military and commercial satellite communications frequencies.
Multi-band terminals are the tools enabling warfighters to, among other things, tap into the DoD teleports to reach DISN services such as the Defense Switch Network, the Defense Red Switch Network, the Unclassified but Sensitive Internet Protocol (IP) Router Network, the Secret IP Router Network, the Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System and video teleconferencing.
The expansion of DoD teleports through fiscal year 2010 is mapped out in a three-generation plan. By the end of fiscal year 2006, the architecture being implemented today should be completed with existing Standardized Tactical Entry Point sites ready for C-band, X-band, Ku-band, UHF and EHF traffic. By fiscal year 2007, military and civilian Ka- band should populate the DoD teleport system. Systems such Advanced Wideband System, Advanced EHF System and the Advanced Narrowband System should be integrated and operational by the end of fiscal year 2012.
The DoD is pursuing a number of terminal development efforts to enable improved communications, including the U.S. Air Force's family of Advanced Beyond-line-of-sight Terminals and Ground Multi-band Terminal (GMT) programs; the U.S. Army's KASAT, Phoenix and KAStars efforts; and the U.S. Navy's EHF Follow-On-Terminal and Navy Multi-Band Terminals.
These terminals are being developed to work with the Wideband Gapfiller Satellites, the Advanced EHF satellites and the Mobile User Objective System (MUOS) satellites. All of these systems are scheduled to begin service by the end of the decade.
"The mobile and portable terminals of the future will achieve significantly better performance due to two major factors," according to a DISA spokesperson. "First, the milsatcom space segments will be much more capable with respect to power and antenna coverage. A single [Wideband Gapfiller] satellite can supply the capacity of the entire DSCS constellation.
"On the terminal side, the use of very efficient forward error correction coding, the super conductive technologies for [radio frequency] reception and conversions, and the miniaturization of electronics being pursued in the cellular phone and Joint Tactical Radio System development will be major contributors," the spokesperson says.
DISA also points to other trends being pursued by the DoD and the industry, including:
- Higher bandwidth and data rates combined with a proliferation of platforms such as unmanned aerial vehicles
- Tactical terminals will be deployed to lower echelons of the military resulting in increased traffic
- Broadband communications on-the-move
- Embedded terminals with connections to line-of-sight and satellite communications
- Handheld broadband services
- Convergence to IP (voice, video, data) and Web-based services
To meet these new and expanded requirements, terminal development programs are focusing on technologies such as direct radio frequency to digital conversions, software-based radios, conformal antennas, multi-simultaneous-band operation of antennas and embedded encryption, the DISA spokesperson adds. The Pentagon is also looking at adaptive coding and modulation techniques that can sense the quality of satellite links to optimize performance in varying weather conditions.
"Everyone is looking to get into solutions that give them more performance with smaller apertures for enhanced portability," says David Beering, principal partner of Chicago- based Infinite Global Infrastructures LLC. "Definitely keep a close eye on SOTM -- satcom on-the-move aka COTM or communications on-the-move. I think the emergence of realistic satellite alternatives for mobile platforms will be pretty big in the next four to five years, especially as new satellite platforms like [Wideband Gapfiller, Advanced EHF] and MUOS hit the sky."
According to industry experts, reducing terminal size, weight and power, improving antenna-pointing performance, providing multi-band performance capability, and doing all of this at a reduced cost involves creating a capability that does not exist today.
"As with any tactical terminal, the challenges have been and remain the ability to withstand a deployed environment," the DISA spokesperson says. "Deployed environments can vary from hot desert to extreme cold climate, be very difficult and require special designs not usually found in commercial satcom applications. Additionally, as the military user community requirements for higher data rates in smaller packages grow, terminal designers have had to develop some innovative approaches."
One example of a new innovative design is the use of commercial direct broadcast satellite technology, which is used in mobile applications and modified for military applications on airborne and ground mobile platforms, the spokesperson says.
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