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Digital Interface Standards Working Group Spearheads SATCOM Industry Initiative for Development of Open Standard

Group issues a rallying call to community to replace L-band IF, paving the way for interoperability, improved performance and costs


San Dimas, California, September 1, 2021 — Wavestream, a world leader in the design and manufacture of next-generation, high-power solid-state amplifiers, announced today that the Digital Interface Standards Working Group (DIS), has invited the satellite communications (SATCOM) community to collaborate on the development of an open interoperability standard for the SATCOM industry. The standard will enable all manufacturers to build interoperable technologies that work in both open and closed network topologies, delivering the most advantages at the lowest cost.

There are various requirements driving the need for an open standard. They include demand for higher throughput and the availability of more satellite bandwidth; the need to deploy and manage networks on a much larger scale; more flexible utilization of bandwidth and the use of higher-order modulations to improve bandwidth efficiency. The traditional analog L-Band modem to RF interface is currently impeding these goals. 

Digitizing the interface between modem and RF components using the new open standard, the industry will be able to leverage the latest virtualization, cloud computing and network function virtualization technologies as well as greatly improve the performance and scale of satellite hub, gateway and modem equipment.

In order to make such an interface practical for the industry, interoperability and standardization is key. The Digital Interface Standards Working Group will oversee the creation of the new standard. Current DIS participants include Communications & Power Industries (CPI), DataPath, Datum Systems, Gilat Satellite Networks, SES, ST Engineering iDirect and Wavestream.

In an open letter to the SATCOM industry, the DIS has detailed the work that has already been completed towards an open standard and opens up participation to the wider SATCOM industry. The open letter may be viewed here.

 

For more information on the DIS, please contact Jim Rosenberg jim.rosenberg@wavestream.com.

 

About Wavestream
Wavestream, is the industry leader in the design and manufacture of next generation satellite communications high power transceivers for In Flight Connectivity, Ground Mobility and Gateway markets. Since 2001, we provide system integrators with field-proven, high performance Ka, Ku and X band Solid State Power Amplifiers (SSPAs), Block Upconverters (BUCs), Block Down Converters and Transceivers. We design, manufacture and repair our products in-house and have delivered over 40,000 systems in the past 15 years. Wavestream products provide high quality and reliability under the harshest environmental conditions and we are currently certified to ISO 9001:2008 and AS9100D standards. For further details please visit www.wavestream.com

For more information contact:
Tom Cox

Vice President, Business Development & Sales
Wavestream
Phone: +1 909 599 9080
Email: tom.cox@wavestream.com

Digital Interface Standards Working Group Spearheads SATCOM Industry Initiative for Development of Open Standard