interactive.satellitetoday.com Open in urlscan Pro
2600:9000:224a:7e00:9:fe99:a540:93a1  Public Scan

Form analysis
0 forms found in the DOM

Text Content

This site uses cookies to optimize your experience including more relevant
content and messaging. To learn more about disabling cookies in your browser,
click here. By continuing to use this site, you accept our use of cookies. For
more information, view our updated Privacy Policy.
I Consent
MenuVia Satellite

ArchiveAuthorsSearch
FacebookTwitterGoogle+YouTubeLinkedIn
SubscribeShare
FacebookTwitterLinkedIn


JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2023

Investing


SPACE INVESTMENT DROPS DOWN TO EARTH IN 2022, WITH A FOCUS ON THE FUNDAMENTALS

After a string of record-setting years that saw space investment…

Found inTechnology


DIFI LAYS THE BUILDING BLOCKS FOR GROUND TECH INTEROPERABILITY

Continued adoption of the ground segment’s interoperable digital standard would
lead to benefits reaching space. From scalability and new efficiencies to more
confident end users, DIFI is set to play an important role for the whole
satellite ecosystem.

Adrienne Harebottle

January 25, 2023



When things just work, isn’t that really a thing of beauty? When things work,
we’re able to do more, to achieve more. We progress. We improve. However,
sometimes to get things to work, often means people and organizations
collaborating and working together for the greater good. In the ground segment
of the satellite industry, it has previously been dominated by proprietary
systems and technology. While this approach is understandable, customers perhaps
would prefer a different approach, greater interoperability, that will make it
easier for them to make key tech decisions going forward.

Industry group DIFI, which is embracing a message of interoperability, seems to
be going from strength to strength. Founded in August 2021, the Digital
Intermediate Frequency Interoperability Consortium is an independent group
advocating for interoperability between satellite and ground system networks.
DIFI set out to establish an interoperable digital interface/radio frequency
(IF/RF) standard based on digital radio standard VITA 49.2, which is well
adopted by the industry.

The consortium made good progress last year and in August, released the
IEEE-ISTO Std 4900-2021: Digital IF Interoperability 1.1 Standard, an updated
version of the initial 1.0. With 54 members now in tow, Version 1.1 of the
specification has seen 800 downloads, and the group is releasing open-source
software to help companies with compliance and certification testing.

DIFI’s goal is to provide interoperability at the digital IF level of the
system. Legacy systems that use analog L-band for IF transport provide a natural
interoperability. However, when IF signals are digitized for transport, there
are many ways to define the packet structure. The DIFI standard specifies that
packet structure to ensure interoperability.

In the big picture, standardization helps give satcom customers the confidence
to transition to digital infrastructure since, with DIFI compliance, they can be
assured that they will not get locked in to one vendor. It also helps the vendor
community to know that if they invest in digital IF-based products, there will
be a market for their products.

“This new standard is just the first step for ground tech interoperability. DIFI
is about supporting a movement within the industry away from proprietary systems
towards open solutions that will allow the industry to interoperate, both within
dedicated satellite networks and across the rest of the communications industry
networks. It will also enable the industry to scale our infrastructure to
support the bandwidth and capabilities of future software-defined satellites and
LEO/MEO constellations,” says Stuart Daughtridge, chairman of DIFI and senior
vice president for Advanced Technologies at Kratos.

Several companies have announced they are using and working on DIFI 1.1
compliant products, while its received considerable support from the armed
forces, too. The U.S. Navy is a founding member and the U.S. Army requested DIFI
compliance in the EDIM (Enterprise Digital IF Multi-Carrier) modem
pre-solicitation announcement that was released in October last year. The army
has since released two more requests for information pertaining to two
DIFI-compliant devices, one focused on Digital IF Converter (IFC) and another on
Digital IF Combiner-Divider.

DIFI chose to have the specification and certification software freely available
via its website in order to avoid any limitations on adoption. However, as the
group gains acceptance, evolution of the specification and certification
processes will affect the entire industry. It is the group’s hope that most
companies will want to be part of shaping this evolution.

While DIFI has made strong progress so far, further adoption of the standard
will be key. It must continue to adapt to the full range of industry use cases
while retaining backwards compatibility. The group is also working to create a
third-party certification process to provide end users with assurance that
DIFI-compliant products will interoperate.


SCALABILITY, THE CLOUD AND HAPPY CUSTOMERS

On the back of significant technological changes, open standards are
increasingly important, Daughtridge explains.

“In the past, satellites were very bandwidth limited. As a result, optimizing
for bandwidth efficiency was more important and valuable than following
standards to achieve interoperability between systems. The newer satellite
architectures and constellations have changed all of that. Now, the ability to
cost-effectively scale operations is the most important factor that will drive
future profitability,” says Daughtridge.

Standards create value by enabling scale through interoperability. This could be
interoperability within the telco industry as a whole via the MEF (Metro
Ethernet Forum) and 3GPP standards, or within the supply chain that DIFI offers.
There are other standards that have been available, although they haven’t always
been implemented in a standard way, notes Daughtridge. This is one of the
elements that the group is working to assure through certification.

“The ground tech environment has evolved from a bespoke system to a commodity
environment to a much more open environment, allowing for more interoperability
and seamless transitions. There are also lower operating costs for providers
like ourselves,” says Rob Rainhart, COO at HawkEye 360 and DIFI member.
“Operators continue to look for ways to drive down these costs and consolidate
the ground to a hosted environment, and to do that you have to have standards.
DIFI propels that kind of vision forward.”

The satellite industry is advancing in technology and capabilities. There are
new constellations in multiple orbits, alongside new standards in the ground
segment. Bringing these together, what heightened capabilities are on the cards?

For ST Engineering iDirect, it’s a future where satellite connectivity can be
established from a cloud environment through the digital interface directly to
the antennas. This is something the company successfully demonstrated together
with Microsoft Azure last September. The two proved the ability of a virtual
modem to extract information from a high-speed satellite connectivity link. They
showcased a virtualized SCPC modem receiving satellite signals digitally via an
ethernet cable. Signals from satellites today are traditionally connected to
physical modems via analog cables that are not directly compatible with
cloud-based networks. This demonstration showed that, in the future, it’s
possible for virtual modems to run on third-party cloud infrastructure replacing
the need for a physical on-premise satellite modem.

Converting hardware into software installed and managed remotely via third-party
data centers would give satellite operators more flexibility over their networks
and speed up how quickly they can respond to customer demands.

“A virtualized modem located in the cloud that can send satellite signals from a
cloud environment through the digital interface directly to the antennas would
further reduce the complexity of operations and improve the flexibility of
service provisioning. It would provide the opportunity in the future to buy the
modem capability via a service model whereby service providers would buy a
subscription and pay only for the needed capabilities,” explains Frederik
Simoens, CTO of ST Engineering iDirect and DIFI member.


WHAT’S NEXT?

If this standard is just the first step, then what is next for ground tech
interoperability, and how could it impact the industry going forward? Surely,
all parts of the system — of the combined space and ground network – must
support connectivity, service levels and scale. After all, if a standards group
is only focused on infrastructure vendors, wouldn’t this raise the chance of not
meeting the industry-wide needs of operators? Would it satisfy the scalability
requirements that lead to broad acceptance as a true standard?

The mobile industry saw massive growth and expansion of their markets when it
moved from 2G proprietary architectures to interoperable 3G standards-based
architectures. The satellite industry is at a moment of transition from 2G to
3G, from proprietary networks to the wide adoption of telecom and satellite
industry standards. This transition is just starting, yet momentum is building,
and the industry can use this to drive growth in the long run.

“The entire satellite industry is going through a digital transformation, not
just satcom. In fact, the Earth Observation and new space market led that
transformation. Their very low-cost satellites drove the need for very low-cost
launch services and more flexible, lower cost digital ground infrastructures.
Software-defined payloads are driving that need for flexibility, responsiveness
and speed in the satcom world. So too is the Ground-as-a-Service model,” says
Daughtridge.

Government and defense missions are also driving transformation with their need
for multi-domain/multi-orbit missions and more. Interoperable ground systems are
essential for all parts of the satellite industry across a wide variety of use
cases, and that is why it is important to have all parts of the market
represented within DIFI.

“The entire ecosystem needs to be on board to make the virtualization of the
ground segment a success. Different industry segments must work together to
implement the standard. If we only cloudify the modem side, then we cannot
create a fully digital teleport,” says ST Engineering iDirect’s Simoens.

In order to fully virtualize the ground segment and create a digital teleport,
the next area of development will need to look at how modulators and
demodulators interface with other key parts of the teleport such as antennas,
amplifiers and frequency converters. Different industry segments must work
together to implement the standard: cloud providers, satellite ground platform
manufacturers, teleport operators, antenna manufacturers, and ground segment ODU
(outdoor unit) manufacturers. If the antennas and amplifiers aren’t cloudified
too, they won’t be able to speak the digital language, and the teleport will not
be virtualized. All parts of the ecosystem will need to be engaged to complete
the puzzle.

DIFI is an important part of the interoperability challenge when it comes to
virtualizing modem technology. However, there are many other aspects to
interoperability. The integration of satellite with terrestrial networks, for
instance, requires interoperability at the management and orchestration layer.
Here, the standardization work being done within 3GPP- non-terrestrial networks
(NTN) looks promising. Another area is space/ground convergence, which requires
tighter interaction between the satellite and ground assets. The standardization
on how these different components should interface is currently being examined.

“Standardization will play an integral role in the evolution we are seeing in
the industry,” says HawkEye 360’s Rainhart. “There is demand for faster
processing and processing that can take place across different environments, and
you need a set of standards in order to move that needle forward.” VS





AD INDEX

 * 
 * 
 * 

In this issue
Close

×Become a Member
Via SatelliteMagazine ArchiveSATELLITE Conference & ExhibitionCyberSat
SummitExplore Membership
FacebookTwitterYouTubeLinkedIn


JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2023

Space Exploration


FUELING THE FIRST SPACE-BASED ECONOMY

How we’re venturing forth to the Moon and beyond and untethering…

Cybersecurity


10 DEFINING MOMENTS IN CYBERSECURITY AND SATELLITE IN 2022

Via Satellite highlights 10 defining moments in cybersecurity and…

Investing


SPACE INVESTMENT DROPS DOWN TO EARTH IN 2022, WITH A FOCUS ON THE FUNDAMENTALS

After a string of record-setting years that saw space investment…

Technology


DIFI LAYS THE BUILDING BLOCKS FOR GROUND TECH INTEROPERABILITY

Continued adoption of the ground segment’s interoperable digital…

Opinion


SOLAR SAILS TO NEW HEIGHTS

The recent successful launch of French Gama Space’s tech demonstrator…


LAUNCH IS TOP OF MIND AS WE START 2023

Ad Index

user-signalWir schätzen Ihre Privatsphäre
Alles ablehnenAlles akzeptieren
Wir und unsere Partner informationen auf einem gerät speichern und/oder abrufen.
Für die Ihnen angezeigten Verarbeitungszwecke können Cookies, Geräte-Kennungen
oder andere Informationen auf Ihrem Gerät gespeichert oder abgerufen werden.
Anzeigen und Inhalte können basierend auf einem Profil personalisiert werden. Es
können Daten hinzugefügt werden, um Anzeigen und Inhalte besser zu
personalisieren. Die Leistung von Anzeigen und Inhalten kann gemessen werden.
Erkenntnisse über die Zielgruppen, die die Anzeigen und Inhalte gesehen haben,
können abgeleitet werden. Ihre Daten können verwendet werden, um bestehende
Systeme und Software zu verbessern und neue Produkte zu entwickeln.

Einige Partner bitten nicht um Ihre Zustimmung zur Verarbeitung Ihrer Daten und
verlassen sich stattdessen auf deren berechtigtes Interesse. Sehen Sie sich
unsere Liste der Partner an, um zu sehen, für welche Zwecke sie ein berechtigtes
Interesse haben und wie Sie dagegen Einwände erheben können.

Ihre Auswahl auf dieser Website wird für diese Website angewendet. Sie können
Ihre Einstellungen jederzeit ändern, indem Sie Ihre Einwilligung widerrufen,
indem Sie auf das Schlosssymbol in der unteren rechten oder linken Ecke klicken.

checklistZweckesettings-toggle-horizontalPartner
Powered By

×
We Value Your Privacy
Settings
NextRoll, Inc. ("NextRoll") and our advertising partners use cookies and similar
technologies on this site and use personal data (e.g., your IP address). If you
consent, the cookies, device identifiers, or other information can be stored or
accessed on your device for the purposes described below. You can click "Allow
All" or "Decline All" or click Settings above to customize your consent.
NextRoll and our advertising partners process personal data to: ● Store and/or
access information on a device; ● Create a personalized content profile; ●
Select personalised content; ● Personalized ads, ad measurement and audience
insights; ● Product development. For some of the purposes above, our advertising
partners: ● Use precise geolocation data. Some of our partners rely on their
legitimate business interests to process personal data. View our advertising
partners if you wish to provide or deny consent for specific partners, review
the purposes each partner believes they have a legitimate interest for, and
object to such processing.
If you select Decline All, you will still be able to view content on this site
and you will still receive advertising, but the advertising will not be tailored
for you. You may change your setting whenever you see the Manage consent
preferences on this site.
Decline All
Allow All
Manage consent preferences