[Satellite TODAY Insider 11-17-11] ViaSat has conducted a military demonstration to unveil its new mobile broadband system using an ultra-small aperture 12-inch Ka-band tracking antenna, which could lead to possible Ka-band business opportunities for the satellite operator. The company confirmed Nov. 16 that the demonstration was attended by representatives from the U.S. Air Force, Army, Marines and Special Forces communities that witnessed a variety of applications, including full-motion HD video running concurrently over a secure, encrypted mobile satellite network.

   The demonstration follows a report published in September, in which ViaSat said it was in talks with the U.S. Department of Defense regarding a satellite upgrade to improve ISR capabilities on operations and confirmed that the Pentagon is “very interested to use ViaSat-1” for the project. In the report, ViaSat said the employment of the ViaSat-1 high-capacity satellite, which is scheduled for launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in September, would represent a significant amount of new business.

   ViaSat also said the deal would result in a need to change techniques in order to get high throughput on the satellite and would require the use of a certain number of gateway communications relays. “We don’t think this will happen overnight but there is some utility in that,” ViaSat said in the report. “[The Pentagon deal] would change a lot of things. The Ka-band satellite has the capacity to serve the accelerating growth in bandwidth demand for multimedia Internet access over the next decade.”

   In the company’s Nov. 16 announcement, ViaSat Global Mobile Broadband General Manager Larry Taylor said the demonstration occurred during unfavorable weather conditions. “We didn’t anticipate conducting the exercise during a rainstorm, but though that worst case happened, the network performed all day without a single link loss … Achieving this level of satellite system performance in such a small physical package is another important milestone for us and especially for our broadband [Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance] ISR customers,” Taylor said in a statement.

   The network demonstration included the ViaSat VR-12 Ka airborne satellite antenna and ArcLight 2 modem mounted to a mobile vehicle. Taylor said as the mobile vehicle drove around the Carlsbad, Va. testing area, the tracking antenna maintained its link with the satellite while demonstrating simultaneous encrypted HD video backhaul, video conferencing, IP phone communications and standard Web browsing. The mobile satellite network also was configured in a number of different modes displaying forward link and return link bit rates, in which the forward link maintained 4 Mbps and the return link performed at 6 Mbps.

   “The size, weight and power envelope of the VR-12 Ka system matches that of its predecessor the VR-12 KuSS terminal, which has hundreds of units fielded. Both systems have the same platform-mounting interface for ease of aircraft upgrade,” said Taylor.