Latest News
 |
|
Eutelsat 8 West B, expected to be launched in 2015, will serve North Africa and the Middle East, featuring advanced security measures including anti-jamming applications.
Image credit: Eutelsat
|
[Satellite TODAY 06-27-13] While satellite signal interference incidents continue to surface, industry officials say the challenges are not insurmountable.
Ron Busch, vice president of network engineering at Intelsat and chairman and executive director of the Space Data Association (SDA), said interference incidents have created an opportunity for the association to build a database for operators to exchange information. “We want to share events of interference to help others,” Busch said. “It’s an opportunity to share data to improve our analysis from immediate data, from operators instead of government agencies.” He said the first part of the database is expected to be online before the end of 2013 and ultimately the data will provide assistance with geolocation services and will contain Carrier ID information.
GVF and the Satellite Interference Reduction Group (IRG) have already trained 10,000 technicians through a global certification program and are expected to adopt an open, spread-spectrum standard for Carrier ID. Eutelsat, however, has its own plan to combat interference.
According to Vanessa O’Connor, spokesperson for Eutelsat, the companny is working on three fronts. On a technical front, Eutelsat is looking at new satellite features such as those on Eutelsat 8 West B, which will serve coverage areas on the Middle East and North Africa using 40 Ku-band transponders. "The features will enable us to have greater control on frequencies and beams," O’Connor said.
From an operational perspective the company is working on several initiatives including carrier identification, which, according to Jay Gullish, director of space and telecommunications with Futron Corporation, "the private sector has been looking at ID codes so you can understand where the interference is coming from."
But even with new technology in place and revised strategic operational approaches, Eutelsat plans to combat interference on a regulatory front by "advising the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) of all incidents and providing geolocation data where available,” O’Connor said.
According to David Hartshorn, GVF secretary general, in April of 2013 GVF and the ITU reached an agreement to collaborate on finding solutions to combat harmful interference. Only a few weeks earlier, the two organizations co-hosted a series of meetings and events with government entities, geolocation companies and broadcasters to address this very issue. Earlier in June, GVF held its fourth meeting in Geneva to address additional “result-oriented solutions” to combat intentional interference.
"Interference presents a series of problems all of which result in a problem for a global satellite industry [which] has rallied to begin to take steps to better identify practices that can improve responsiveness and perhaps dissuade would-be jammers from engaging in these practices in the first place," Hartshorn said.
Andrew Duva, a consultant with Providence Access Company, noted that intentional interference represents only about 1 percent of the total of satellite interference cases and the rest stems from unintentional sources. Hartshorn agreed saying that human errors and faulty equipment continue to be the main culprits of interference overall. He said he is optimistic that GVF’s training and certification efforts will make a big difference in reducing unintentional interference.
Still, intentional inference continues to remain problematic for some operators. From a U.S. perspective, Gullish said while the there would be clear benefits from the execution of a treaty to prevent intentional harmful interference, problems could also emerge such as the United States’ own need to jam other countries’ signals. "The U.S. military and government won’t give away that capability," Gullish said. "On the one hand, we need the offensive abilities that surpass our peers, but we also are the most vulnerable [to intentional interference]."
Gullish suggested a compromise, creating rules for outside of wartime. "All bets are off in a real active engagement setting but it makes sense to have rules set otherwise," he said noting that "what we’re really talking about, by and large, is impacting the commercial world. Balancing that with the periodic military requirement. That’s something the government needs to look at."
According to Hartshorn, the U.S. Department of Defense has a group based in Colorado that is dedicated to managing interference. But from a policy perspective on Capitol Hill, a House Intelligence Committee spokesperson declined to comment when asked if they would support a measure to reduce jamming.
In case you missed it, be sure to check out Part I of this story: Harmful Satellite Interference Incidents Remain on Radar
Get the latest Via Satellite news!
Subscribe Now