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United States : New Dual-band Ku/Ka Terminal Enables In-flight Network Switching Across Commercial Ku- and Ka-band Satellite Networks [TendersInfo (India)]
[September 18, 2014]

United States : New Dual-band Ku/Ka Terminal Enables In-flight Network Switching Across Commercial Ku- and Ka-band Satellite Networks [TendersInfo (India)]


(TendersInfo (India) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) In-flight network switching between commercial Ku- and Ka-band satellites has been successfully demonstrated by ViaSat Inc., using its innovative dual-band terminal and a new radome. The test flights, conducted in July and August on a commercial 757-200 aircraft, demonstrated the state of the art in broadband enroute communications with the aircraft transitioning among multiple satellite beams from six satellites and three Ku- and Ka-band networks.



For enroute airborne missions, seamless roaming on the best available broadband network can assure our customers continuous operation on a resilient enterprise network, said Ken Peterman, VP ViaSat Government Systems. This demonstration was an important step in realizing that vision.

The test flights validated ViaSat s best available service premise, a concept that borrows from mobile cellular communications. Similar to the way a cell phone roams between 3g and 4g or LTE, seamless satellite network-switching can benefit customers in the same way, as higher performance satellite coverage areas are introduced to new regions. The flights proved the feasibility of switching between commercial Ku- and Ka-band satellites, and between different broadband airborne networks. The airborne broadband terminal integrated a ViaSat Ku/Ka-band antenna with ViaSat mobile and broadband modems, and a third-party modem.


Over the past year, ViaSat Exede® in-flight internet has enabled broadband satcom communications on 200 commercial aircraft operating over the ViaSat high-capacity Ka-band satellite network in North America. The company has also significantly expanded its global Ku- broadband airborne network to address enroute connectivity for business aircraft. Multiple service tiers are available that provide increasing levels of priority access to assure performance when and where it s needed.

System testing encompassed a number of typical applications for enroute connectivity. Testing showed that the dual-band system offered high-performance communications with these attributes: Concurrent operation of networking applications such as VoIP, HD videoconferencing, email, internet, messaging, and very large file transfers. In-flight link speeds up to 29 Mbps to and 7 Mbps from the aircraft on these Ku- and Ka-band commercial satellites: SES-1, SES-2, AMC-16, ViaSat-1, WildBlue-1, and ANIK-F2. Operation using data protocols including UDP, TCP, Web, and FTP to gather performance information. Video streaming including live HD television and HD video on-demand movies.

(c) 2014 Euclid Infotech Pvt. Ltd. Provided by SyndiGate Media Inc. (Syndigate.info).

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