For projects running under ARTES, ESA currently provides satellite capacity through Eutelsat satellites. This has made a wide variety of new projects in the area of satellite applications possible. The SAGAN software project aims to help ESA Telecom users to reserve and monitor their required bandwidth via web.
The SAGAN project alleviates capacity satellite problems by decreasing dependence on human operators and automating the procedure. Current allotment of satellite capacity is almost entirely handled by human operators who must carry out several steps when allotting capacity.
Firstly, a request must be made by a user; then the best operational mode can be determined. After this, the various requests must be organized and scheduled. The end result can be slow and inefficient, and is entirely reliant on human criteria.
To solve this, the SAGAN project team developed a new hardware and open source software platform. The hardware architecture includes a variety of features enabling the software to operate as a network filter and interpret user requests. The user can access the interface with standard internet browsers which have a secure connection.
The project is very good example of how newer technologies can combine with existing ones to improve the efficiency of satcom related activities. To read more about the technical aspects of SAGAN, click on the link at the top-right-hand corner of this page.
SAGAN (Web Based Satellite Capacity Management System) was developed for ESA Telecom by a consortium of three Spanish companies, SGI, GMV and Hispasat. The project started in January 2003 and took nine months to reach the current operational testing phase.
The project has entered its has entered its validation phase and the system is installed at ESA ESTEC in Noordwijk Netherlands. After a final review, it will be online and available to users sometime later this year.
