GNAT System Facilitating the Use of Commercial NGSO SATCOM Constellations for Air Force Missions

In this proposal, Intelligent Fusion Technology, Inc. (IFT) proposes to develop a Global Network Access Terminal (GNAT) system, to facilitate the use of emerging commercial non-geostationary orbit (NGSO) satellite commucniation (SATCOM) systems in Air Force operations. The GNAT system allows user devices to access the Internet simultaneously through multiple (government owned and commercial) SATCOM networks, to achieve improved network quality of service (QoS), including enhanced connection reliability and network throughput. IFT GNAT hardware solution uses a novel integration of multiple regular (single WAN) routers. With the solution, there is no need to develop customized router hardware for GNAT, which leads to great cost savings. The modular structure of the GNAT hardware solution also makes the GNAT router easily expandable. IFT will develop software that automatically configures the routers to perform GNAT functions. Key GNAT functions to be developed include network connection management, network QoS monitoring, dynamic network resource allocation, and Internet broadband bonding function that allows throughput aggregation of multiple networks. Testing the GNAT’s hardware and software functions is critical to success of the GNAT system. In this project, a SATCOM network emulator will be developed, which allows the development and testing of GNAT functions in various network conditions.