The 2010 Military Communications Conference - Unclassified Program - Systems Perspectives Track

VALIDATION OF HIGH-SPEED BROADBAND SATELLITE COMMUNICATIONS ON AIRBORNE PLATFORMS

Steven Arnold*, Guy Montgomery, Rajeev Gopal, Daniel Losada Hughes Network Systems, LLC Germantown, MD ABSTRACT The desire for satellite-based airborne communications on the move (COTM) has been an emerging trend in recent communication systems. This has been true for both DoD and Civilian systems being deployed. Early implementations of COTM have mostly been focused on the Land-Mobile environment, but this is starting to broaden into other domains as well. There is burgeoning domestic and international interest in airborne platforms to provide high-speed broadband communications. The predominant satellite-based implementations to date have been at frequencies such as L-band, which offers some benefits with omni-directional antennas and large coverage areas. However, these frequency ranges suffer from relatively low data rates (e.g., in the kbps range), overcrowding in key areas of operation, and expensive costs for end users. This has created a desire to shift some of the airborne communications to available Ku and Ka bands, both commercial and military. This paper will clarify the challenges of the airborne environment for satellite communications and present solutions for each of them. Areas that are especially challenging include satellite handover, Doppler correction, and coverage areas. Also, the results of a recent airborne demonstration with very small aperture terminals (VSAT)s are presented to validate a solution to this difficult but indispensable capability. INTRODUCTION Airborne-based satellite communications has recently seen a measured advancement in interest from a variety of commercial and military entities. The desired user applications are varied, including everything from Internet access on commercial airliners to domestic and international governmental agencies wanting video surveillance applications to aid in national disaster assessment. The increasing use of UAVs for airborne intelligence and reconnaissance and weapon use creates unique demand for high data rate uplinking from remote network nodes. This network connectivity on the move needs to support commonly used audio, video, sensor, and data transfer applications. Therefore, a standards-based solution is a key consideration, especially for support of net-centric capabilities that prescribe IP-based communications at all organizational levels and network segments. There has also been increasing momentum in both government and civilian entities to leverage commercial technology and frequency bands to help meet the needs, especially if the technology can be deployed immediately. This desire for a commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) offering is often driven by the need to mitigate risks by evaluating and purchasing production systems that have already been developed by industry based on commercial and anticipated government requirements. It can also help with cost and purchasing control, an especially attractive consideration in the tight budgetary cycles being experienced by both civil and governmental organizations. For airborne systems, satellite communications can provide several distinct advantages over traditional line-ofsight communications which traverse directly from the airborne platform to the ground. The geographically large coverage area that a single geosynchronous satellite can provide allows the aircraft to dwell in the footprint of a single satellite for long periods of time. Depending on the fielded applications, airborne platforms may also need to fly at higher altitudes for weather or stealth reasons (i.e., so they cannot easily be detected). This again provides an ideal environment for satellite based communications, where the communication link quality is insensitive to the airborne platform altitude. Though satellite-based airborne communications has been an area of interest for decades [1], it continues to be pursued for its inherent advantages. The satellite-based approach does not come without its design and implementation challenges. We address many of these, including handovers between satellite coverage areas, maintenance of Internet Protocol (IP) communications during these handovers, and Doppler Frequency compensation for the high rate of speed experienced in aeronautical environments. For example, varying flight durations and patterns may require an aircraft to venture outside a single satellites coverage area. In order to maintain uninterrupted communications,

978-1-4244-8180-4/10/$26.00 2010 IEEE

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the airborne system must be able to accommodate handovers between neighboring satellite coverage areas. This is a complicated feature of any regional or global airborne system and must be designed into the communications architecture to support continuous coverage, availability, and operations. The rest of the paper is organized as follows. The next section further identifies and analyzes key challenges of the satellite- based communication solutions for airborne platforms. This is followed by a description of the satellite-to-satellite switching and inter-regional roaming capabilities necessary to support world-wide continuous operations. The next section describes the preservation of TCP/IP connections in the airborne environment. Finally, we take a detailed look at an airborne experimental flight that validated the high-speed data rates under various flight patterns. We concluded with a summary of findings and some direction for future work. CHALLENGES FOR AERONAUTICAL VSAT BROADBAND Implementing a Ku-band VSAT on a high-speed airliner presents a number of significant challenges that are unique from other mobility applications, such as maritime. The high-speed movement (e.g., up to 600 mi/h) of the satellite terminal creates Doppler frequency shifts, which require compensation in order for the satellite link to function correctly. In mobile systems, the look angle to the antenna in use changes constantly as the mobile platform moves about the geostationary satellite footprint, and as the mobile platform performs maneuvers such as turning, climbing, and descending. Consequently, mobile terminals cannot use a fixed-mount antenna, but must instead use an antenna that can dynamically re-point to track the satellite effectively. Note that there is ongoing research and development for lower profile phased array technology with beam forming, but this next-generation technology is not yet readily available [2]. There are mechanical limitations on how low in relation to the horizon mobile antennas can track, and this means that an antenna cannot always be pointed to see a given satellite over the entire range of the typical satellite footprint. There are areas at the edge of the satellite footprint where the look angle to the satellite is below the limit that the antenna can achieve. As a result, it is not possible to maintain reliable tracking for a terminal using just one satellite when the given coverage footprint is large enough; hence handovers would be needed [3]. For example, a terminal moving over the standard CONUS (continental United States) coverage area would require multiple satellites, positioned at different longitudinal

orbital positions to provide complete CONUS coverage. This is shown in Figure 1 for a transcontinental flight that requires coverage from three satellites. To provide regional coverage in this environment, the terminal must be able to automatically switch from one satellite to another. Furthermore, to prevent the switchover from impacting the end-user experience, the system must be able to maintain end-to-end Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) connectivity so that ongoing connections are not broken at the point of switchover.

Figure 1. Example of Multi-Satellite Environment DOPPLER FREQUENCY OFFSET HANDLING As mobile terminals move, an RF Doppler offset is introduced on terminal transmissions. Depending upon the velocity of the terminals and the types of maneuvers the terminals perform, the transmit Doppler shift may be large enough that the terminals carrier can no longer be received by the demodulator at the system gateway. In the worst case scenario, Doppler shifts of nearly 20 kHz may be seen with airborne terminals.

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To compensate for this effect, the Hughes HX System employs two techniques as demonstrated in Figure 2. The top row in Figure 2 demonstrates operation without the mobility features. In this case, the center window shows the standard hub demodulator-receive window, and illustrates how bursts with transmit Doppler fall outside the hub demodulator window and are not received.

SATELLITE SWITCH CONTROL

Because of the issues noted above regarding the typical limitation of aeronautical antennas, it is important that the VSAT system have the capability to rapidly - and transparently to end users - switch from satellite to satellite. The HX System has been intentionally architected to support this rapid switchover. Figure 3 shows the network architecture for an HX System with mobility support in an application in which each of several gateways is enabling services on a different satellite. For each satellite transponder supported, a gateway and associated Radio Frequency Transceiver RFT is installed. Because the gateway antennas do not have the look-angle limitations of mobile antennas, it may be possible to colocate some of the gateways at a single site. In the example shown in Figure 3, it is assumed that gateways 2, 3, and 4 are co-located. Gateways 1 and 5 are assumed to be remotely located because their antennas cannot see the transponders they are associated with from the central location. Their management and data traffic are backhauled terrestrially to the main network location for two reasons: 1) Backhauling the management traffic allows all of the gateways and their associated terminals to be managed from a single network management platform, the standard HX ExpertNMS identified in Figure 3. 2) Backhauling the data allows a single entry point to the Internet, and also allows management of the IP traffic in such a way that connection loss during switchover can be avoided (more information on this follows below).

Figure 2. Doppler Compensation Techniques for Airborne Environments The second row in Figure 2 shows implementation of the first Doppler mobility feature, in which the hub demodulator receive window is extended to +/- 2500 Hz. It can now be seen that for bursts with moderate Doppler, such as might be seen in land-based or maritime mobile environments, the bursts fall within the expanded window. However, bursts with large Doppler offsets, such as those typical of an airborne mobile environment, are still not received. The third row in Figure 2 shows the effect with Active Terminal Transmit Compensation, the second Doppler mobility feature. Using real-time navigation data, the magnitude of the Doppler offset that is experienced by a terminal is continuously calculated. The terminal then applies a transmit frequency correction equal in magnitude to the anticipated Doppler but in the opposite direction. Thus, as the transmit carrier leaves the terminal, it appears at the correct frequency and now falls within the hub demodulator window.

Figure 3. Mobility System Architecture

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As a terminal moves, its position is monitored. As the terminal crosses from one gateways coverage area into another, its antenna is instructed to point to the new satellite and the terminals modem is instructed to lock to the new system outroute. PRESERVATION OF TCP/IP CONNECTIONS Associated with each gateway is a Transport IP gateway. This device provides the transport-level termination point for all traffic in the given transponder. The HX system employs Performance Enhancing Proxy (PEP) technology to improve the performance of the TCP traffic over the satellite connection. The PEP backbone is not terminated in the transport IP gateway. Rather, it is terminated in the PEP IP gateway, as shown in Figure 3, and the TCP connections to the Internet come from this gateway. This means that as a terminal transitions from one gateway to another, the underlying transmission channel through the initial transport gateway is dynamically torn down and then re-established through the new transport gateway without any effect on the TCP connection to the Internet. The net effect is to preserve the end users connection and minimize impact on system operation during switchover. INTER-REGIONAL ROAMING The network architecture illustrated in Figure 3 shows the system components required to provide coverage for only a portion of the globe. To achieve global coverage, multiple instantiations of the single-region architecture can be used. Each instantiation would have its own local network management, its own PEP gateway and an associated entry point into the Internet. As a mobile terminal reaches the edge of a regional coverage area, the terminal would perform a standard antenna satellite switch, but after acquiring the outroute, the terminal will register with a new network management system. If the terminal has not previously operated within this new regional coverage area, the terminal would automatically be registered in the database (in subsequent visits to the region, the terminal would not need to reregister). The terminal would finally download any operating parameters specific to the new region, implement them, and then automatically become operational. STANDARDS BASED SOLUTION Another important aspect of any airborne solution is the desire to use industry standards to maximize

interoperability and hence ease adaption. As such, the airborne systems as described in this paper leverages many industry standards in the solutions space. The video and audio compression techniques are COTS equipment with implementation at the IP layer. So the video and audio encoders are able to produce standard IP data packets over an Ethernet interface. The HX satellite modem itself is IP based in that Video Conferencing, Video Streaming, Voice over IP (VoIP) and other web based technologies can run over the satellite transport. Additionally, the HX modem supports the STSI and TIA DVB-S2 standard on the outroute (hub to airborne terminal) and the ETSI and TIA IPoS [4,5] standard on the inroute (airborne terminal to hub). And again, all the technologies converge at the IETF IP level for easier interoperability and deployment. Also along these lines, the HX platform allows a common solution for land-mobile, maritime, fixed, and airborne terminals such that they can all participate seamlessly in the same operational network. This capability is unique and well positioned for national defense where a mission may involve operations in air, land, and sea. Additionally, this can help reduce end-user training and total operational costs as the technology can scale for a simultaneous variety of features such as co-existing variations in coding, modulation, and QoS. The overall heterogeneous network can also benefit from feedback and joint evolution capabilities tested and proven in a variety of operational scenarios. The use of a standards-based satellite modem with TRANSEC feature further enhances the applicability of our solution for critical missions that require information assurance. AIRBORNE DEMONSTRATION We now turn our attention to an airborne demonstration activity that validates the concepts presented thus far. In this demonstration, we considered an operational scenario involving a constant video stream transmission, in a single hop over a satellite, from the airborne platform to the ground (as shown in Figure 4). This type of scenario is consistent with the desire for video surveillance for assessment of post-natural disaster conditions, warfighting, or national sovereignty issues, such as patrolling areas of interest. What is unique about this environment is the unbalanced or asymmetric nature of the communications traffic, which is largely biased towards moving data from the airborne platform to the ground. This is in contrast to commercial airlines who want to offer Internet access to passengers onboard the aircraft. In that scenario, the balance of the traffic is sent from the ground to the airborne terminal (e.g., on-board user browsing the web, downloading

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YouTube videos, etc.), taking advantage of larger antennas on the ground for transmitting the data at higher rates. However, in the scenario we demonstrated, the uplink (from the airborne terminal to the ground) needed to carry high definition (HD) quality video, requiring on the order of 2 Mbps on COTS modem technology.

aircraft might need to fly in circles or in Figure Eights over the area of interest to assess the resulting damage. Figure 5 shows a typical test flight over land and sea that involved many such intricate patterns that would challenge satellite COTM solution because of the banking issues.

Figure 5. Airborne Flight Pattern during Demonstration DEMONSTRATION RESULTS Figure 4. Airborne Demonstration Simplified System View The airborne equipment on-board the aircraft also had to be specially crafted for the harsh environment. For example, a low-profile antenna was used to reduce drag by lowering the height of the antenna. The equipment was also D0-160 certified for flight, a rigorous certification process that requires equipment to be flight-worthy and non-interfering to essential flight electronics. TEST FLIGHT PATTERNS The primary goal of the airborne demonstration in Spring of 2010 was to verify the ability to stream high quality video surveillance imagery from the airframe platform to the ground using a low-profile 2-axis antenna. The second objective was to sustain an uplink rate of 2 Mbps. Note that a satellite handover was not attempted during this demonstration. For testing the first objective, the video transmission needed to be accomplished at various bank angles during the flight. The bank angle is defined as the angle of measurement between the wings and the horizon. So although it is interesting to understand the performance of the airborne system at level flight, it is of greater interest to understand the performance at various bank angles. This is driven by typical flight patterns where an aircraft may dwell in the region of interest. This is easy to imagine when considering an operational scenario where the aircraft is interested in a particular area on the ground, such as assessing hurricane damage. In such cases, the Overall, the airborne demonstration proved to be very successful on a number of fronts. First, the availability of the video stream was very good for level flight and standard banked turns up to 15 degrees. In fact, the level flight achieved close to 99% availability. For the strenuous environments up to 15 degree turns, an availability of 95% was demonstrated. The application availability performance is summarized below in Table 1. Table 1: Bank Angle Performance Bank Angle Level Flight Up to 15 degrees Availability 98.54% 94.99%

At bank angles above 15 degrees, we start to see some impacts of the low-profile 2-axis antenna used in the demonstration where the skew angle to the satellite becomes a factor. This is where the choice of satellite and transponder (for G/T), the orbital slot of the satellite, and the orientation of the 2-axis antenna and the satellite can impact the performance. There also needs to be consideration of the FCC limitation for adjacent satellite interference such that the antenna does not interfere with the operations of neighboring satellites. All of these challenges are unique to the exact antenna type and other geometrical considerations, such as the satellite location and bank angles. However, the demonstrated results using a 2-axis low profile antenna were very encouraging, especially for bank angles of 15 degrees and below. These impressive results were also demonstrated at rates of 2Mbps, thereby validating the goal to show broadband

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data rates from the airborne terminal over the satellite to the ground. The video was properly received, decoded, and continuously displayed on a monitor on the ground. This effectively produced a real-time video stream of the exact imagery contents that the cameras on-board the aircraft were sending. CONCLUSIONS The paper presents the key design challenges for high data rate airborne COTM satellite communications and presents a standards-based COTS solution. Besides presenting the technical details of the architectural approach, it captures the validation of an airborne satellite-based communications system with impressive data rates sent from the aircraft to the ground. During the demonstration, the data rates peaked at 2 Mbps and allowed real-time video imagery to be streamed while in-flight. This was also performed at various bank angles to help validate realworld operational scenarios, such as when there is a need to dwell on a region of interest in a post-disaster event. Results were presented to validate the impressive performance under these circumstances. Although we validated the high data rate satellite airborne solution in cost effective Ku band, this system is also designed to work in Ka band with even higher spectral availability and space segment cost savings. Finally, the efforts captured here should engender both industry and governmental entities to develop solid confidence in the enabling airborne COTS technology for defense and disaster response applications. As such, it seems reasonable that in constrained budgetary environments, there is a role for existing COTS solutions to meet the need for military satellite communications. When these commercially available solutions can be demonstrated and validated to meet the rigorous requirements of military environments, they should be seriously considered as viable solutions to meet the needs of todays military communications. * Steven Arnold is now affiliated with Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.

2. Conformal Phased Array with Beam Forming For Airborne Satellite Communication, Schippers, Verpoorte, Jorna, Hulzinga, Meijerink, Roeloffzen, Heideman, Leinse, Wintels, 2008 International ITG Workshop on Smart Antennas 3. Steven Arnold, Anthony Noerpel, Rajeev Gopal and Sridhar Chandrasekharan, Implementing a Mobility Architecture for a Regenerative Satellite Architecture (RSM-A) System: A SPACEWAY Perspective. In Proceedings of IEEE MILCOM Conference, San Diego, 2008. 4. Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB); Second generation framing structure, channel coding and modulation systems for Broadcasting, Interactive Services, News Gathering and other broadband satellite applications (DVB-S2), ETSI EN 302 307, V1.2.1, April 2009. 5. Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) published TIA-1008, IP Over Satellite (IPoS) (2003)

REFERENCES
1. A History of U.S. Military Satellite Communication Systems, Donald H. Martin, The Aerospace Corporation, http://www.aero.org/publications/cross link/winter2002/01.html

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