Applications Using New Satellite Communications Constellations

Proposed NGSO communications constellations will provide global coverage with significantly increased bandwidth with the commercial objective of providing world-wide internet access. These constellations are expected to exceed a megabit/second and can be used to augment existing Air Force communication satellite assets. The hardware required to interface with these constellations will also have significantly lower SWAP requirements than what is needed to interface with the DoDs current satellites. These features will enable CONOPS for military missions that require high bandwidth data capabilities. Examples include control and communications with swarms, video based ISR, and streaming large quantities of sensor data for off-board processing. Utilities that communicate with these constellations must be secure and remain operational as the constellations and commercial landscape evolve. The challenge for DoD is how to take full advantage of these constellations and the capabilities they will enable. Emergent proposes the development of ICoNS (International Communication Network Software) a software application to provide secure communication through the internet connections provided by these NGSO networks. Additionally, Emergent proposes the extension of DISCo (Distributed In-flight Sensor Control), Emergents software framework for the control and management of sensors to utilize ICoNS to operate over these NGSO networks.