Militaries want to combined the advantages and shore up the weaknesses of LEO and GEO satellites.
OneWeb and Eutelsat have demonstrated for NATO representatives the ability to connect their respective low-Earth-orbit (LEO) and geostationary-orbit (GEO) satellites to a single mobile terminal.
The demonstration in May— at Eutelsat’s teleport facility in Rambouillet, France—was conducted for representatives of the NATO Communications and Information Agency, the two companies said on June 8. A Kymeta Hawk u8 user terminal, a flat electronically steered antenna array mounted on a Land Rover Discovery vehicle, was used for the event.
During the demonstration, users streamed 4K video feeds, ran Microsoft Teams, viewed Twitch livestreaming and utilized Google Earth map software at 195 Mbps download speeds and 32 Mbps upload speeds. The latency was as low as 70 millsec., the companies said. The terminal also conducted a “seamless handover” between beams and satellites, and made a 1-Gb file transfer in less than 8 sec.
“Ukraine has shown that LEO satcom helps generate real combat advantage against a more powerful opponent,” says Chris Moore, vice president of defense and security at OneWeb. “OneWeb is ideally placed to help compress decision cycles and get resilient, high-bandwidth, low-latency connectivity to the tactical edge.”
The partners say the aim of the multi-orbit communications capability is to provide users with primary, alternate, contingency and emergency connectivity should one network become disrupted or unavailable.
“Satcom services that can operate in multiple orbits, at GEO and at LEO, as well as exploiting multiple frequency bands, can better guarantee that communication links are available when required in challenging operational environments,” says Serge Cholley, head of defense and security at Eutelsat.
Constellations of LEO satellites, like those operated by OneWeb and SpaceX’s Starlink, offer lower levels of latency compared to GEO satellites, which are farther away from Earth. Also, because constellations are made of hundreds of satellites users, they have backups. Alternatively, GEO satellites can provide continuous coverage of fixed locations without the need for inter-satellite handoffs or ground-station tracking.
Commercial satellite operators and militaries are interested in combining the advantages of LEO, GEO, and medium-Earth-orbit satellites. In addition to terminals that can connect to satellites in multiple orbits, companies are working to develop inter-satellite links using radios and laser communications equipment.
