Introduction – Downlink 5
When “news of the day” includes an ambitious program from a well-heeled entrepreneur to build and launch more than 4, 000 satellites weighing nearly 900 pounds each over five years at a $10 billion price tag, I have a lot of reactions. One of them, at the visceral level, is “that’s all about engineering.”
Behind big rockets, big satellites, and big networks, there’s a lot of enabling technology being built and tested on the ground. For years the SATELLITE show has presented the engineering behind the success stories; SATELLITE 2017, March 6-9, 2017, at the Washington Convention Center, will expand that track record with a comprehensive curricula of engineering sessions designed to satisfy the most probing practitioner while delivering strong takeaways and market intelligence to the layman as well as the technician in the trenches.
We open our program on Monday morning, March 6, delving into the Terabit-per-Second Satellite with an overview of the key payload and digital processor design requirements necessary to create a fully processed high-throughput satellite payload capable of supporting terabit-per-second data rates. That’s followed by Creating Value through Satellite OTT Services, decrypting Over-the-top (OTT) video services that have been rapidly increasing as content providers offer more assets via OTT channels. Where’s the value for satellite networks delivering live linear OTT services, working with content providers and operators? Find out at SATELLITE 2017.
Going Dome-less: Why the Future of Maritime Communications is Flat recognizes that the maritime industry is on the precipice of a connectivity revolution. What will it mean to design and operate in a dome-less world and how can the industry prepare for changes to satellite connectivity? Using Satellite Imagery and Machine Learning to Locate Oil Spills offers a lens on the fast growth of satellite constellations offering high-resolution observation data regardless of weather conditions. This evolving capability generates opportunities to monitor, predict and report on a variety of incidents that may affect infrastructures and ecosystems on Earth. Meanwhile, satellite servicing is on the horizon. Emerging technologies and missions are making on-orbit refueling, maintenance, and repair attractive options for satellite owners/operators. Should You Make Your Satellite Serviceable presents steps you can take now to prepare your fleet for future servicing calls.
Simplify Access to Space for Micro-Satellites through Standardization covers access to space, always problematic for small satellites. Learn about a new approach in this key session. Is the jury still out on electric propulsion? Electric Propulsion: Another Tool or Fundamentally Changing Economics of Space delves into what this technology means for the future of space commercialization. Is it fundamentally changing the economics of doing business in space? How to Stay Two Steps Ahead of the Innovation Tidal Wave will appeal to telecoms marketplace professionals of all disciplines. It’s no secret that the satellite-centric communications business is anticipating a tidal wave of change. What was once a predictable and slow innovation cycle in GEO is accelerating into a GEO-MEO-LEO future of massively greater bandwidth offered through drastically different business models. How are companies that operate ground segment anticipating and adapting to these changes?
Likewise, the gateways… How Teleports Compete in a GEO-MEO-LEO, HTS and Fibered World takes a close look at teleports, traditionally associated with fixed satellite communications but always connecting points for different transmission paths. That positions them well for a market in which satellite will be used only where its unique economics make sense. What does the optimal network look like for different customer applications? Ground Segment Business Focus: Diversify Your Markets or Drill Deep into Your Niche poses key questions: When markets and technologies start to shift, leaders are confronted with a fundamental question. Should the business seek to diversify into new markets in search of growth, or drill deeper into established niches where expertise and market knowledge create “sticky” solutions that are hard for customers to replace?
Another vital session, Are Service Providers Effectively Consolidating and Acquiring Ground Assets, looks at service providers which have acquired a series of teleport operators and merged them into successful and much bigger businesses. While big service providers in today’s markets struggle with revenue growth, these new acquisition-built companies appear to be delivering on the promises of consolidation. What are these acquirers doing to make their consolidation strategies effective? How are the competitive dynamics of the business changing as a result? The Certified Teleport: Competing on Quality plumbs the quality of service advantage. What are the essentials of a high-quality teleport in terms of facilities, technology and operating procedures?
Can Flatter Antennas Bring Fatter Profits? It’s not a trick question: Flat-panel antennas are finding their first customers in applications where their form and weight offer the biggest return for in-flight broadband and other modes of mobility. As the technology advances and competition among providers drives lower prices and higher performance, the economics of network deployment will radically change.
Going Femto: Satellite Swarms using ChipSats and PCB Sats charts in many ways the development of electronics, which has led to increasing adoption of CubeSats, and has made possible space missions based on even smaller ChipSat and CubeSat “femtosatellites” (spacecraft based on a chip or a printed circuit board). By going femto, new capabilities can be envisioned and flight-tested in a fraction of the time required to build large spacecraft. This new technology may dramatically lower the cost of access to space and enable a new class of distributed space missions, potentially with thousands of “femtonodes” performing real-time multi-point observation and analysis in orbit.
More detail on the engineering track at SATELLITE 2017 can be found at www.satshow.com, along with the entire four-day conference agenda. There really is something for everyone who makes a living in the global satellite-enabled marketplace during the most important week of the year. The Satellite Group at Access Intelligence LLC will be updating the conference agenda every day. Stay tuned, register, and make plans to be in Washington, D.C., for SATELLITE 2017.