INDUSTRY
INTERVIEW,
MILITARY
INFORMATION
TECHNOLOGY
MIT
C4ISR Volume 11, Issue 5, 2007
Michael
Pollack
Vice
President, Government Sales
Advantech
Satellite Networks
With
more than 17 years of experience in the satellite communications equipment and
services industry, Michael Pollack maintains extensive knowledge of satellite
network architecture and related technologies. Michael is responsible for the
provision of satellite terminals and satcom services to the Army and other
Department of Defense organizations, and to numerous U.S. government
contractors, service providers and integrators.
Q:
What is Advantech Satellite Networks, and what products and services does it
offer?
A:
Advantech
Satellite Networks is the premier provider of DVB-RCS and DVB-S2 VSAT
technology. These are technologies that are based on open-standards
architectures. Just as you have phones based on the ubiquitous GSM standard or
you recognize that the Internet is based on the RFCs, you have DVB-RCS and
DVB-S2 as internationally recognized standards for VSAT technologies to promote
interoperability between satellite terminals and hubs. Advantech Satellite
Networks is the market leader in this space. We have a 70 percent market share
of the DVB-RCS market globally today, and in the DoD space we are the only
vendor to have successfully delivered certified DVB-RCS/S2 hub and terminals.
If
you have the opportunity to hear Lieutenant General Steve Boutelle, the outgoing
CIO of the Army, deliver a speech, chances are that one of the first points
he’ll make is that interoperability is an objective for the Army. It’s been
difficult in the past to obtain true interoperability, but by going to DVB-RCS
and DVB-S2, our military is on the right track.
In
February 2006, DoD CIO John Grimes issued a satcom policy directive, stating
that DVB-RCS and DVB-S2 are the technologies that are to be used in the DoD
Teleports and on the upcoming milsatcom “birds,” such as Wideband Global
Satcom Satellite [WGS]. We are compliant with these standards, and in support of
the missions that incorporate this technology. Our equipment today resides at
the DoD Teleport in
Our
technology has also been used by DISA in the Landstuhl Teleport to implement the
first two-way Global Broadcast Service [GBS] for use by warfighters today. The
goal of many in DoD is to make GBS a global two-way VSAT service. Today, it’s
mostly a one-way service, receiving military or commercial TV, SIPRNet or file
transfer. The new two-way GBS service has been in operation for a year and a
half, and is passing well over a terabyte of data per month.
Q:
What unique benefits does your company provide military customers?
A:
We know that our technology is
providing greater benefits to our end users, service providers and integrators
than any other proprietary VSAT system today. The number-one reason is in terms
of bandwidth efficiency. Our product, using DVB-S2 technology, provides the
highest bits per hertz of any VSAT system on the market today. We provide more
than 2 bits per hertz on average to remote terminals from a hub. To put it in
perspective, a typical VSAT deployed today by our military is generally about 1
bit per hertz or less.
In
terms of going from the remote to the hub, we can transmit at data rates as low
as 64 kbps, so if you have a site that’s doing some remote monitoring and only
needs to transmit a little bit of data, you can go as low as 64 kbps. But it
also can go as high as 8 Mbps, which is extremely high. These speeds are ideal
for transmitting high-resolution video.
You
may ask, why not just have everybody at 8 Mbps? Why have some transmitting at 64
kbps? The reason is really quite simple. You see, if you go to a high data rate,
your antenna size and the size of the radio that sits at the end of the antenna
become very large. Unfortunately, we’ve seen a lot of antennas come back from
Q:
What are you doing for the future?
A:
We have a very interesting roadmap at
Advantech Satellite Networks. We’ve just announced our full mesh technology
where any remote can communicate with any remote using a single hub. For
example, any one of a thousand remotes could communicate with any other remote
in a network. This will be the only technology accessible with this capability.
The Army is a big user of mesh capability, and they will have an alternative to
choose from once we fully deploy our full mesh. Moreover, we have just released
a modem product that switches from SCPC to RCS modes, providing the best of both
worlds to the end-users.
Unlike
other VSAT companies, our main product line is DVB-RCS and DVB-S2. We don’t
have other proprietary technologies that we’re trying to protect. We build one
technology, and everything we do is based on standards and interoperability. We
know that as more people build to a standard, prices come down, more features
get added, and the end-user gets a better product with greater benefits.
Contact:
Michael.Pollack@advantechamt.com