AsiaSat Expands Earth Station

AsiaSat is expanding its Tai Po Earth Station in Hong Kong. The project consists of a 900 square meter addition for equipment, a 600 square meter area for additional TVROs and the construction of infrastructure to support the installation of new communications antennas. Construction work for the expansion of the earth station is expected to be completed in early 2012.

The AsiaSat Tai Po Earth Station is a control facility for supporting the Telemetry, Tracking and Control (TT&C) activities of AsiaSat’s satellite fleet, while providing a broad range of value added services to customers including DVB-S2/S MCPC platforms, turnaround and uplink services, conditional access, playout service and fiber connectivity.

Broadcom Delivers New HD Upgrade Path Solution

Broadcom has launched its next-generation 40nm HD satellite set-top box system-on-a-chip (SoC) solution. Broadcom says its new technology will enable low-cost HDTV and interactive services in emerging markets such as Brazil, Russia, India, China and Africa (BRICA).

The new Broadcom BCM7358 HD satellite set-top box SoC aims to reduce design complexity, size and overall system cost to accelerate deployment of HD satellite set-top boxes throughout the BRICA markets. The company’s new BCM7358 single-channel 1080p HD advanced video coding (AVC) satellite receiver chip features a high-performance CPU and graphics engine, digital living network alliance connectivity support and advanced security functionality.

Comtech, KNS Complete Technology Integration

Comtech EF Data and KNS, a Korean satellite antenna systems manufacturer, have completed the successful technology integration of the SuperTrack Series of marine stabilized antenna systems and the ROSS Open Antenna Management (ROAM) protocol.

The integration will enable the SuperTrack antenna systems on maritime vessels to roam across multiple satellite beams, maintaining connectivity moving through different satellite footprints and enhancing communication capabilities at sea. The ROAM protocol offers a common management interface for Comtech’s Roaming Oceanic Satellite Server (ROSS) and third-party Antenna Control Units (ACUs) by providing a base set of ASCII character commands, information, interfaces and status queries.

Qualcomm Adds GLONASS Support to Smartphone Chipsets

Qualcomm has revealed details of a new smartphone using one of its chipsets, which supports both the Russian GLONASS and U.S. GPS satellite navigation systems.

The first GLONASS capable phone is the MTS 945 from ZTE, powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon MSM7x30 chipset. The Snapdragon MSM7x30 chipset and software solution allows this smartphone to take advantage of both satellite navigation systems.

The additional signals from this expanded satellite network provide more accurate location information for the growing number of location based applications and services.

Support for both satellite networks is currently integrated into Qualcomm’s Snapdragon MSM7x30 chipset and software solution, and will be supported moving forward on select Snapdragon and feature phone chipsets with Qualcomm’s latest GPS engine.