How to Achieve Flawless Delivery to Phased Array Antennas

November 6, 2017

Secure and reliable high throughput is becoming increasingly important

Metamaterials-based antennas with electronic tuning (also known as Flat Panel Antenna, Flat Plate Antenna, or FPA) are being counted on to securely and reliably send large files, programs, and live streams at high speed via LEO and MEO constellations (that is, Non-Geostationary Orbit Satellites – NGOS) to vehicles on the move.

Small, solid-state, low profile, wideband FPAs in Ku-band and Ka-band on moving vehicles offer a potentially much lower cost and better technical solution than motorized antennas for delivery from satellite to moving vehicles – if these transfers can be made reliable and secure.

But early tests of FPAs indicate that delivery of content at high throughput from LEO constellations and MEO constellations to Flat Panel Antennas on moving vehicles cannot yet be done securely and reliably.

The best answer to this resides in enhanced Forward Error Correction (FEC) network protocols which supplement the FPAs with state-of-the-art wireless FEC algorithms to yield the kind of performance that is crucial to successful delivery from NGOS.

When FPAs have trouble, advanced FEC recovers/reconstructs as necessary. KenCast does not need perfection from the FPA – we can make the wireless link perfect.

This past spring, private industry leaders and military decision makers met in Virginia to discuss high throughput, cyber security, and communication challenges.

During the event, attendees discussed two main challenges:

  1. The need for a mobile communications solution that delivers high throughput.
  2. The need to ensure secure communications in theatre.

As a platform for this, attendees discussed soon-to-launch Low Earth Orbit (LEO) and Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) satellite constellations. These new constellations will enable mobile applications with high throughput delivery of large files and streaming video and low latency communications for vehicles on the move all over the world.

The military needs to enable secure and reliable high throughput over these satellite networks globally. Due to adversaries that might attempt to intercept data, these requirements are especially important.

Cinema and Other Applications

Similarly, the movie industry will start delivering cinema content (movies & live performances) directly to cars/trucks/RVs/planes/trains/buses on the move.

Consequently, movie distributors will need to find a solution for delivering content to vehicles that are moving in and out of low and high bandwidth areas, and randomly visible to the satellites.

How? The answer is rateless forward error correction (FEC).

A Forward Error Correction algorithm sends unique FEC packets of data, mathematically related to the original data, along with the original data content, with security (encryption/DRM), at high throughput.  As a result, if packets are lost or corrupted, the FEC data will be used to recreate the original data, ensuring that critical reliability.

Therefore, a vehicle will receive data (original or FEC) whenever it locks the satellite. When the vehicle’s receiver gathers an amount of data equal to, or slightly bigger than, the size of the original content, the receiver can recover the original content for playout/playback.

Also, AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) encryption is applied to each packet of data. AES is a form of encryption that has been approved for use by the National Institute of Standards Technology (NIST) for such purposes.

AES encryption is available in GNU Privacy Guard (GnuPG) suite. You can download GnuPG directly from the KenCast website.  GnuPG works with KenCast’s existing Fazzt® product suite and proven & extensive FEC algorithms to provide secure, reliable delivery of content.

In conclusion, satellite networks and high throughput will become the norm for video-on-the-move (VOTM).  Security and reliability will become even more important.

KenCast’s software is well equipped to deal with these high throughput challenges.

If you have any questions or would like to talk with us about using Fazzt for your data delivery, please contact us at fazzt@kencast.com or call 203-359-6984

KenCast does not need perfection from the FPA – we can make the wireless link perfect.

Work Cited

Schradin, R. (2017, May 18). Why not satellite? Addressing military C4ISR needs from the sky. SES-GS. http://ses-gs.com/govsat/defense-intelligence/not-satellite-addressing-military-needs-sky/