A Ka-band high data rate shipboard satellite terminal

A fully articulated shipboard satellite antenna system operating at Ka-band (30/20 GHz) was designed, developed, and tested by engineers from the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), NASA's Glenn Research Center, and a number of industry partners. A series of tests conducted in October of 1998 on Lake Michigan (in the Chicago area), using NASA's Advanced Communications Technology Satellite (ACTS), achieved an unparalleled full-duplex data rate transmission of 45 megabits per second (Mbps) between a moving vessel at sea and a fixed-earth station. Network and application layer tests were run concurrently with the data rate transmission trials, examining TCP/IP file transfers, video and voice transfer technologies, and asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) networking techniques. This demonstration, called the Shipboard ACTS Ka-band Experiment (SHAKE), utilized a combination of commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) and government hardware and clearly illustrated the viability of high data rate (HDR) Ka-band systems for ship-to-shore communications. Understanding of how emerging satellite services can best be used to meet naval requirements, and how the Navy can best be positioned to use these emerging services was a critical component of this work. Underlying networking, protocol, terminal, and bandwidth-on-demand issues, combined with variable bit rate service and HDR capabilities, present challenges not typically addressed in current Naval SATCOM systems.