Jacob Blanc, iDirect Government’s Director of Strategic Solutions
SATCOM interoperability: A work in progress
Although universal interoperable satellite communications (SATCOM) would provide enormous benefits in terms of collaboration, resiliency, and security, the industry has yet to achieve it. Not all SATCOM providers are ready to abandon their proprietary technologies in favor of a standardized approach. We spoke with Jacob Blanc, iDirect Government’s Director of Strategic Solutions, to find out how technology and IP constraints can be overcome to provide greater resiliency for the Department of Defense (DOD) and government agencies.
Crispin Littlehales, Executive Editor, Satellite Evolution Group
Question: What does your position as Director of Strategic Solutions entail?
Jacob Blanc: Although I wear multiple hats at iDirect Government, my primary role is managing our sales engineering team which drives the technical discussions with our customers. The team establishes the positioning of our solutions within particular customer environments.
Over the last year and a half, iDirect Government has adjusted its business strategy. Whereas previously we delivered commercial-off-theshelf (COTS) products built and engineered with independent research and development (IRAD), we’ve been augmenting that with customerfunded development solutions. The sales engineering team runs all of the proposal efforts and requests for information (RFI) responses. We work with the product management team and build business cases for both internally and externally funded programs and products. Our NRE funding has expanded significantly while gaining greater insight into our customers’ needs and requirements.
Our satellite modems are unique. We don’t sell many set-top boxes or rack-mount modem equipment, but rather card-based software defined radios (SDRs) that fit inside terminals, particularly in on-the-move and man-portable form factors.
Our new 4-Series SDR gives integrators even more options. From a hardware perspective, the modular design of the 4-Series SDR allows integrators the option to change the layout and configuration of the modem, allowing for tighter integration into satellite terminals.
Question: In what way has the DOD’s new space strategy affected the way iDirectGov does business?
Jacob Blanc: Today there are more commercially available satellite broadband services than ever before. There are many more constellations that the US DOD can use to augment its private networks. This situation provides multiple advantages to the DOD and other government entities. First, multiple constellations can lead to operational and cost efficiencies. If required, the end user can employ commercially available services in regions where the user rarely deploys for dynamic and temporary use. Second, this can help save on bandwidth costs the user normally would have to purchase for rarely used regions or expand its footprint to regions where it does not currently have coverage.
The iDirectGov Waveform Development Kit will allow partners to integrate multiple waveforms into iDirectGov’s 4Series software defined radios (SDRs).
Third, these services provide redundancy without the high cost of utilizing anti-jam modems for every mission set and requirement. DOD customers with both operational and budget constraints are now using multi-constellation, multi-orbit, multiple reach-back options which are now part of their Primary, Alternate, Contingency, and Emergency (PACE) plan.
Question: Where are we when it comes to SATCOM interoperability? Is the above scenario in widespread use?
Jacob Blanc: If you compare the satellite communications world to the cell phone world, we’re still at the ground level with interoperability. Today, cellular phones can roam from one network to another fairly seamlessly. In the SATCOM world, most of these commercial constellations are vertically integrated and proprietary in nature. In theory, SATCOM companies can implement standard waveforms such as DVB-S2X and RCS2.0, and we can have foundational interoperability. However, the standards allow for some flexibility in the implementation, and there are things that the standards do not cover such as transmission security (TRANSEC) and quality of service (QoS). These specific features allow for greater security and spectral efficiency, which has historically been more important than interoperability.
Today, the focus for SATCOM has shifted from trying to get all the modem vendors to play together, to network interoperability such as integrating 5G and the 3GPP core with the satellite network so the network functions just like any other wide area network connection or radio access to network connection.
There’s been a lot of focus on terminal interoperability. The goal is to have a terminal that can connect to multiple constellations on multiple frequencies and multiple orbits. Having a single terminal that can operate on different constellations is a great advantage for users at the tactical edge. This allows them to have multiple reach-back
options and not be siloed into a specific network. Terminal integrators are currently designing these systems with multiple modems embedded into the terminal to support these different constellations. This is a good first step, but the complexity and logistical costs of operating multiple modems can provide a burden to the end users.
At iDirect Government, we are providing this desired integration in a single SDR modem that can interoperate with many constellations.
We are in a good position to achieve this goal because we have a very large customer base operating private Evolution Defense networks within the DOD and provide the ground segment technology for large commercial global networks like Inmarsat GX and Intelsat Flex services. This allows for a platform that is multi-constellation and can roam between government, private, and commercial networks. We’ll be expanding on that with the 4-Series platform, which allows iDirect Government and third-party companies to integrate waveforms into iDirectGov’s 4Series SDR through abstraction and virtualization.
Question: Can you just take something off the shelf and plug it right into what exists or is some customization required?
Jacob Blanc: Consider the modem as the brain of the satellite system. You have a modem, a terminal and some network equipment behind it. The modem decides the power levels, the frequency on which to transmit, which waveform to use, and which satellite to utilize. As a modem manufacturer, we work with terminal manufacturers and satellite operators to ensure that our modem integrates into their systems seamlessly and that it provides an easyto-use, capable system for the end user.
Our systems are easy to set up. The integration usually happens before the delivery. For example, if the US Government wants to buy a terminal from a specific vendor with an iDirectGov modem in it, we’ll work with the vendor on the integration process. By the time the US Government sees that terminal, it already has the bugs worked out, and the US Government can just set it up.
Question: What do you see as the key challenges to attaining widespread interoperability?
Jacob Blanc: I don’t know if we’ll get to complete waveform interoperability anytime soon, but having an SDR that can support multiple waveforms is the path forward for now. It’s the strategy we’re supporting with our 4-Series SDR. We are now building partnerships with other modem companies to enable this.
We are about to embark on a project that requires us to import the waveform of another satellite modem company onto our 4-Series SDR. We’ve demonstrated to the customer that they will save about $30 million in terminal costs over the next five or six years by doing so, and that doesn’t even account for the cost of logistics, training and support. Had the customer not selected our approach, two satellite modems would be needed to be deployed with each terminal as opposed to just ours, which can access both waveforms and both constellations as required. In addition to the extra costs associated with a dual modem approach, this increases the terminal’s size,
iDirectGov’s modular software defined radios (SDRs) offer design flexibility while supporting multiple orbits and waveforms from a single piece of hardware.
weight and power (SWaP), which affects the tactical warfighters at the edge.
We plan to partner with as many satellite modem waveform and constellation providers as possible to port their waveforms onto our open standard platform. For interested parties, we would supply them with our Waveform Development Kit (WDK), which is a software development kit that allows them to develop on the platform. The WDK allows them to do their implementations on the iDirectGov platform. This way, they can maintain their IPs and realize revenues by licensing through our 4-Series SDR. The 4-Series SDR has mechanisms in place to maintain FIPS 140-3 Level 3 certification as well as stay in line with a zero-trust architecture. The security measures in place ensure each waveform package gets digitally signed and is authenticated before the 4-Series SDR can fully boot up. This makes sure that no compromised platforms can join the satellite network.
Question: There are barriers inherent to partnering. How does iDirectGov break those down?
Jacob Blanc: The 4-Series SDR uses open standards interfaces. That means we can send this platform out to anybody, and they can develop it using their engineering resources with very little direction from us other than the interface control documents (ICDs) we provide. iDirectGov has a very large footprint, so this approach allows modem manufacturers that don’t have large infrastructures in place to get their waveforms into certain marketplaces. As a result, our business strategy has worked well. As with any new business, we develop a business case to see if it aligns with both companies’ financial and strategic goals. If the business case works out on both ends, we move forward with the development. We have had many discussions with industry partners, and there is a lot of interest, but there is
hesitance. Even though DOD users have talked about this concept often, until the money is put behind it, the industry will be slow to adapt.
Question: Can you provide more details about how the Waveform Development Kit works?
Jacob Blanc: There is a hardware abstraction layer that sits on top of the hardware platform. It gives the integrator or the developer a simplified instruction set to develop the platform. Typically, in a satellite modem, the waveform is very tightly integrated into the hardware that it’s developed on. For example, there needs to be accurate power and frequency offsets written to registers in the modem for it to be able to operate correctly. We simplify that interaction to the hardware from the waveform perspective without needing to see their IPs (intellectual properties). They don’t need to give us anything other than the encrypted netlist of their waveform implementations. Then iDirectGov incorporates the management of the waveform implementation into the 4-Series Web User Interface, we verify performance testing on the implementation, and then digitally sign the final package. The waveform implementation is then offered as a licensable feature on the 4-Series.
What makes the WCore (the abstraction layer) on the 4-Series very attractive is it contains a set of features that the waveform integrator can take advantage of. If the waveform requires FIPS 140-3 certified encryption, it can take advantage of the already FIPS-certified crypto engine residing in the 4-Series platform. This saves time and cost in the FIPS approval development and process. Also, any waveform that is incorporated into the 4-Series platform can integrate with iDirectGov’s patented interference excision algorithm, Communication Signal Interference Removal (CSIR™). iDirectGov will continue to develop the WCore to include more standard features that any waveform can take advantage of.
Question: How long do you think it will take before interoperability is achieved?
Jacob Blanc: We have agreements in place with almost all the major modem manufacturers which sell to the DOD. The outliers right now are the newcomers to the marketplace—the LEO constellations like Space X’s Starlink. They have vertically integrated systems, and it has been a challenge to bring these larger companies to the table to talk about interoperability.
This will change over the next few years. The US Government will continue to push all vendors down the patch to interoperability. There is a huge initiative, especially in the US Government, to go with virtualization and a software-defined infrastructure. The US Government knows that it doesn’t want to deploy 10 modems to meet a mission requirement, and the US Government is pushing the industry to get to that common hardware platform that can host multiple waveforms.
iDirect Government is at the forefront from an SDR standpoint and the creation of a platform that is both interoperable and can easily accommodate other waveforms as well as meet the latest DOD security demands.
