More Optimism From Hardware Providers
As the number of Ka-band payloads grows, the vendors of terminals and other vital ground components are seeing more reasons for optimism. However, there is still a way to go before the volume of Ka-band sales is substantial. "Our Ka-band RF (radio frequency) product volumes are still quite small today, and it does not constitute a major part of our business yet, but we are seeing growth and expect this to continue," says Ed Kevork, vice president, RF product development at Advantech AMT. There is strong demand for solid- state high power amplifiers (HPA) for powers up to 50 watts and 100 watts, he says. "Due to the high frequencies, almost all applications are for outdoors close to the hub of the antenna."
Xicom Technology Inc. also has seen increased demand for Ka-band high power amplifiers throughout the last several years in both the commercial and the military markets, according to Travis Stewart, Xicom's director of engineering. "One of the most significant advantages of operating in Ka-band is that it offers additional operational bandwidth, which gives operators more capacity. The high capacity in Ka-band drives the requirement for greater linear power," says Stewart, who describes the output power of the HPAs as increasing from 120 watts to greater than 250 watts throughout the last five years. "The integration of block up-converters into HPAs is common in C-band and Ku-band, and there is an increase in requests to integrate these devices into the Ka-band HPAs, too," says Stewart. "The advantage is decreased system integration complexity, reduced system cost, and a direct L-band input into the HPA."
Besides lower cost of RF products and terminal hardware, service providers want a system that scales easily and supports automated subscriber provisioning, facilitates subscriber and traffic management, and allows unmanned operation of satellite gateways, Agnew says. "There is no significant difference in network management of Ku-band versus Ka- band systems. Spot beam Ka-band satellites enable networks that can exceed the size and scale of local cable or [digital subscriber line] networks and require commensurate network management systems," he says.
According to Max d'Oreye, Newtec's director of business development, there are significant network management challenges due to such things as adaptive coding and modulation functionality, a complex hub infrastructure and complex service level agreement management stemming from the real-time monitoring of the receive conditions at all the terminals, as well as data traffic bandwidth variability. Newtec products include end-to-end solutions like 2Waysat and a satellite triple-play system dubbed Sat3play. However, customers are requesting Ku-band solutions due to the high cost and low availability of Ka-band capacity in Europe in particular, where Ka-band has never really evolved into a viable commercial option. "To access the consumer market on a larger scale, we need more satellites with Ka-band spot beams, such as Anik F2," says d'Oreye.
The failure of a Ka-band satellite also would leave the user without much back-up capacity at his disposal, says Giagtzoglou. "In the United States specifically, Ka-band capacity is better positioned to serve specific parts of the market, such as large VSAT networks for Internet services or consumer broadband services. This puts less pressure on Ku-band," he says.
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