New platform for reliable connectivity developed in partnership with ESA’s 5G/6G Hub
From the European Space Agency's (ESA) European Centre for Space Applications and Telecommunications (ECSAT)’s 5G/6G Hub, British company UniVirtua has successfully demonstrated a new product called dashAlpha – a connectivity-enhancing software platform that offers a step forward in reliable connectivity for self-driving cars, transport as well as vehicles crucial for disaster relief.
The dashAlpha d500R platform is designed to establish connection with several different sources – the so-called wireless bearers – such as satellites, cellular towers, Wi-Fi, Mobile Ad-hoc Networks (MANETs) and bond these together to increase broadband and decrease latency for the end user, by making use of a machine-learning algorithm used to predict satellite bandwidth performance. The technology is funded under the Space for 5G/6G & Sustainable Connectivity programme, within ESA’s Advanced Research in Telecommunications Systems (ARTES) and with support from the UK Space Agency.
During the live demonstration, the platform was used to bond multiple Starlink and Vodafone’s 5G Mobile Private Network (MPN) cellular connections to deliver resilient, high-bandwidth video calls. It was discovered that, despite one of the connections being deliberately severed, a stable connection was maintained – thus unaffecting the quality of the call.
By aggregating multiple sources of connectivity, dashAlpha eliminates a single point of failure and creates a fault tolerant connection which can survive degradation, jamming or removal of one or more wireless bearers. Additionally, the software-defined nature of dashAlpha enables it to run on a variety of Commercial-off-the-Shelf (COTS) hardware, delivering a more cost effective and future-proofed solution than over existing proprietary communications solutions physically tied to their hardware.
“This project aligns with the 5G/6G Hub’s ambition of becoming one of Europe’s centres for excellence and innovation in 5G and 6G connectivity, and my team and I are proud to have added our expertise to this endeavour. Thanks to the cooperation between UniVirtua, ESA and the UK Space Agency, we have worked to advance dashAlpha, opening the platform’s potential to deliver resilient, high-bandwidth communications to remote and underserved areas,” said Antonio Franchi, the Head of ESA’s Space for 5G/6G & Sustainable Connectivity programme.
“UniVirtua has developed and successfully demonstrated a hybrid connectivity software solution at the ESA 5G/6G Hub, unifying terrestrial 5G and non-terrestrial communication bearers. This achievement showcases seamless integration across domains and highlights the potential of hybrid architectures to deliver resilient, high-performance connectivity,” Angelos Goulianos, 5G/6G Systems Engineer who is responsible for the ESA 5G/6G Hub implementation.
"We are thrilled to have taken part in the Advanced Research in Telecommunications (ARTES) Space for 5G/6G & Sustainable Connectivity," said Joseph Poole, CEO of UniVirtua. "This opportunity allowed us to enhance the capabilities of our dashAlpha platform to create transformative solutions that can significantly benefit the wider community in the provision of secure and seamless connectivity."