Whether accidental from improper equipment installations or deliberate from government factions jamming news broadcasts, interference remains the industry’s costliest threat as satellite enters new mass markets to deliver consumer broadband, airborne connectivity and other telecom services.

“There is broad recognition that the industry absolutely has to get it right at this juncture; there is simply no room for failure,” says David Hartshorn, secretary general of the Global VSAT Forum (GVF). Hartshorn, along with Martin Coleman, executive director of the Satellite Industry Interference Reduction Group (IRG), have circled the globe over the last few years as the industry’s most visible anti-interference evangelists.

 

Efforts

Together with satellite operators, GVF and IRG have seen significant headway in their global interference prevention and mitigation initiative. Recent milestones of this broad-based effort include:

• Training 10,000 technicians through a global certification program, an effort seven years in the making.
• Doubling the global footprint of industry test agencies that ensure earth station equipment performs within acceptable industry limits to not cause interference.
• Achieving widespread support for Carrier ID, with the DVB Forum expected to adopt an open, spread-spectrum standard for Carrier ID in early 2013.

“Carrier ID will actually be in a position at this point to take off. With the issuance of the standard, everyone has a hook they can get behind,” notes Dick Tauber, the CNN News Group technology executive who serves both as WBU-ISOG chairman and co-chair of the RFI-EUI.

At the SATELLITE 2013 conference in March, Tauber will moderate the satellite interference panel, which is expected to draw significant interest. In addition to Carrier ID, Tauber plans to discuss the growing specter of intentional interference and what steps the industry can take to combat it.

 

Intentional Interference

Intentional interference is a timely topic given the number of high-profile satellite jamming incidents that have occurred in the last two years since the start of the Arab Spring – the democratic uprisings that spread across the Arab world.

Mark Rawlins, head of payload engineering and operations for Eutelsat, observes that deliberate jamming, while still a small percentage of overall interference, has been increasing dramatically, going from 54 cases in 2010 and 109 last year, to 340 as of the start of November 2012.

In October 2012, it was widely reported across the international press that Syria was believed to have joined Iran in jamming satellite frequencies of international broadcasters, affecting not only Arabic and Persian language broadcasts but also 25 broadcasters, who had to make contingency plans. The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) called the interruptions of news broadcasts “an attack on media independence.”

The targeted jamming cut off radio and television content by broadcasters including the BBC, France 24, Deutsche Welle and the Voice of America. Regional providers such as Nilesat and Arabsat were also hit hard. A spokeswoman with French-based operator Eutelsat confirmed that this deliberate interference in October began after U.K. satellite broadcaster Arqiva terminated broadcasts via Eutelsat’s Hot Bird satellites of channels belonging to the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB).

“A number of transponders were hit over a two-week period affecting a range of international broadcasters,” says Nigel Fry, head of distribution for BBC World Service. According to the Fry, the footprint of the disruption stretched from northwestern Europe to Afghanistan, reaching hundreds of millions of people. “We also have to bear in mind that there was collateral damage since services adjacent to those targeted for jamming were also affected,” he adds.

Fry says the BBC has been no stranger to jamming. In 2009, the global broadcaster launched a new TV service, BBC Persia Television, aimed at the Farsi-speaking market of Iran and the region. “Since the summer of 2009 that service has been subject to deliberate jamming,” he says.

IRG’s Coleman recalls that “having Middle East carriers as well as satellite operators, especially Eutelsat, and carrier monitoring suppliers in the mix was a very good thing. We were able to have engineers from all parties around a common table to figure out what we could all do technically.”

The satellite industry is currently implementing a two-fold strategy to combat the problem: First, during the IRG meeting it was decided to identify technical solutions through a new deliberate interference working group, which will be chaired by Yasir Hassam of Arabsat. There is also a need for more predictive solutions, such as improved monitoring and control.

“There also was a big push to better establish processes and technology to improve our evidence gathering and thus quickly define the source of intentional interference using geolocation and other methods,” Coleman says.

Today, gathering evidence of deliberate carrier events is neither quick nor in the right format. It also typically comes from one source: the affected party, with those accused denying the charges or otherwise ignoring the complaints; i.e. one word against another, no witnessed data.

This is why both the GVF and the IRG want to create a more proactive process of evidence gathering from a number of sources so the ITU has enough data to take informed actions based on accurate and proven carrier transmission information.

“We want more independent, registered monitoring stations to gather evidence quickly and efficiently to support the affected party. We are looking at ways of achieving that and automating that information into the correct format for the ITU to use. The faster we put evidence down on the table, the more effective we’ll be at getting complaints raised, addressed and resolved,” says Coleman.

Hartshorn says he plans to leverage the GVF’s prior work with inter-governmental initiatives, and to invite all concerned stakeholders to jointly evaluate data and, potentially, to develop a code of practice designed to dissuade the use of intentional interference.

“This isn’t the first time that our industry has faced seemingly insurmountable challenges,” Hartshorn says. “It wasn’t long ago, for example, that government satellite monopolies were the norm. Bringing everyone into the same room – in an international forum like the ITU – and keeping the issue front and center led to concrete solutions, and we believe similar gains can be made in this case.”

 

Growing Profile of ITU

Following the Dubai meeting, the WBU and BBC each hosted separate meetings to look at what the broadcasting community can do to solve these issues. Fry says 130 people attended the initial discussion and nearly 70 stayed for a closed technical session that looked at ways in which to improve the accuracy, location and speed of pinpointing interference.

“We came out of the meeting with a number of actions to follow up on,” says Fry.

A commonalty of all these meetings was the much more visible ITU presence. Satellite operators want the Geneva, Switzerland-based UN agency to bring its diplomatic clout to bear on member nations engaging in interference. The ITU has a delicate balancing act, since its members feel they have a right to protect their citizens from what they consider propaganda. Fortunately, the ITU has legislation in place against intentional interference.

The diplomatic piece of the equation is critical, says Rawlins, who recently hosted a follow-up meeting on the issue at Eutelsat headquarters. Rawlins doesn’t think the industry can just focus on technology to address jamming because it doesn’t get to the source of the problem. In addition, operators always face the risk of further escalation. “The diplomatic route of putting pressure on governments is more effective,” he says.

The EBU’s deputy director of technology and development David Wood agrees. “It’s vital that we understand why deliberate satellite jamming occurs; we must get to the root causes and discuss them openly and dispassionately,” says Wood, who chaired the session on deliberate jamming at the WBU’s International Satellite Operations Group (WBU-ISOG) meeting hosted in Geneva at the EBU offices at the end of November.

Wood believes that deliberate satellite jamming is the “thin end of the wedge, which, if not checked, may extinguish the free flow of information for parts of the world,” he says. “We need to understand the role that the ITU can play, and use the ITU as far as we can to resolve the situation. At the ISOG meeting we took a step forward in understanding and in moving to a set of actions.”

Hartshorn, who plans for GVF to also play a role in passing along interference data to regulatory and public policy channels at local, national and global levels, considers the issue similar to what governments faced during the Cold War.

“Everyone has their finger ready to push the button if they choose,” says Hartshorn, noting that there is an opportunity for nations to come together just as they did during the nuclear threat and develop protocols and expectations that would dissuade the practice of intentional interference. In the meantime, the satellite industry is doing what it can to get out in front of the problem.

“By watching and understanding the politics, we can start to predict when intentional interference might occur, and set up equipment in readiness to monitor the slots that are most likely to be interfered with,” says Coleman.

 

‘Predictive Analysis’

The Space Data Association (SDA) also has an important role to play in the fight against interference. Originally focused on avoiding satellite collisions, SDA currently provides Conjunction Assessment processing for over 232 GEO satellites and 101 LEO satellites, and is the preferred vendor to manage the Carrier ID database. In 2012, three civil government agencies, NOAA, NASA and the European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (Eumetsat), joined the association.

SDA’s newly appointed chairman, Ron Busch, who also serves as Intelsat’s vice president of network engineering, says the Association is in the process of working with Pennsylvania-based Analytical Graphic Company, the firm contracted with SDA to operate the Space Data Center, to put together requirements for radio frequency predictive analysis. “We believe this would help on launches and flybys when operators are moving their satellites to different orbital locations. You would have known frequencies and known slots, and you can run analysis quickly to see where there is particular interference,” he explains. The SDA is also trying to deploy a more targeted alert system when interference is detected. This would allow the association to seek technical help in pinpointing interference by region or zone. Today, everyone gets the alert message.

 

Geolocation Technology

Geolocation technology vendors also hope to provide their customers with better means to pinpoint the source of interference as well as confirming type of interference.

We are taking additional measures by putting [anti-jam technology directly] on the satellites.

­— Mark Rawlins, head of payload engineering and operations, Eutelsat

“Knowing the difference between intentional and unintentional is very important,” says Kevin Haymes, director of Global Sales, Space for Siemens Convergence Creators, a major provider of carrier management and geolocation systems. “Some of our customers are having issues with intentional jamming. We’re rolling out software updates to a number of customers that will offer a more accurate ability to geolocate,” he adds.

Current geolocation technology uses an adjacent satellite to pinpoint interference through triangulating the source. Siemens plans to roll out a new geolocation offering, OneSat ILS, in 2013 that would provide the same detection of interference but using only one satellite.

“This would be important for X-band and Ka-band satellite operators because there are fewer such satellites and often not in an adjacent orbital slot,” says Haymes. He adds that smaller players would also benefit since they, too, have fewer satellites, which tend to be spread out geographically.

Rawlins remains unconvinced, however, that single-satellite geolocation technology is currently accurate enough to have an impact on the interference problem. He eagerly anticipates future developments in this field, as it will be an important step forward in the percentage of the satellite operator fleets that can be protected with such technology.

“We are taking additional measures by putting [anti-jam technology directly] on the satellites,” says Rawlins, noting that both Eutelsat 25B, to launch mid this year, and Eutelsat 8 West B, set to launch during the third quarter 2015, will have an extra layer of protection. The satellites will feature narrow beams up to the satellite and a restricted geographic footprint, making them less susceptible to jamming from the Middle East.

 

More Resilient Spacecraft

Similarly, Intelsat’s EpicNG spacecraft already uses spot beams that restrict the footprint on the downlink side. On the uplink side, there are “some spot beams,” says Busch, who, in addition to his SDA role, oversees design and implementation of Intelsat’s satellite-based data networks, video distribution systems and transmit/receive facilities.

Intelsat had had discussions with manufacturers about the possibility of having active arrays on spacecraft, which would adjust the footprint as needed. Such nulling technology is common on defense satellites, enabling them to be almost completely jam proof. But such technology comes at a hefty price, and, according to Fry, runs counter to the industry trend toward more simple satellite payload designs.

“It definitely makes the satellite more complex and that weighs into decisions you make on what can be done on the spacecraft,” adds Busch, citing an analysis presented by the European Space Agency during the BBC meeting that found that commercial satellites with active arrays on board stand to lose up to half of their capacity.

He remains encouraged that broad-based dialogue is occurring. “We are talking about what can be done and that’s a good thing.”

And no one can dispute that the industry is keen to take an industry approach to address the satellite interference issue from all angles, using a combination of technology and diplomacy. The question remains, will these efforts be enough to keep the momentum of the industry moving forward now that it has mass market reach?

Fry remains optimistic that the momentum he’s experienced on the satellite-based TV programming side will continue in spite of the challenges.

“The satellite industry has shown itself very able to withstand challenges of the Internet, and it needs to ensure that it continues to be able to withstand other challenges and deliver a tremendous service to media and communications,” he says.