The objective of the Technology programme line is to maintain and enhance the competitive position of the satcom industry and operators by developing new technologies enhancing the performance and cost efficiency of equipment, subsystems and systems. Many ESA-sponsored innovations have already been deployed operationally.
Examples of ground equipment include; development of satellite interactive terminals, gateways, network control elements, and modems/codecs for terminals and gateways.
Attention is drawn to a specific development opportunity in the area of DVB-RCS terminals: The SatLabs Group, an association committed to promoting the large-scale take-up of the DVB-RCS standard, concluded that a possible way to reduce the cost would be to have common components optimised for DVB-RCS and which could be used in terminals in all different system implementations.
The Group identified a number of key components that are critical from the user terminal cost viewpoint, for which no optimised components exist in the market and for which common specifications could be defined. These specifications were provided to ESA as recommendations for further development.
For more detailed information on this ITT, click here. For background information regarding this development opportunity, and the component specifications, see the SatLabs Key Components Specification.
ESA Telecom is seeking to actively involve a wider sector of the telecommunications industry in satcom-based projects and ventures. To find out what ESA Telecom could do for your business, see the How to Particpate pages.
