An Evaluation of MUOS Support to Legacy UHF Terminals

The DoD ultra-high frequency (UHF) follow-on (UFO) satellite constellation, which provides narrowband communications to many tactical users, is nearing the end of its design life and will soon be replaced by the next generation UHF military satellite communications (MILSATCOM) system, mobile user objective system (MUOS). The purpose of this paper is to investigate the degree to which the MUOS will be able to support legacy UHF terminals. We first provide an overview of each of the two satellite systems, UFO and MUOS, respectively. Next we describe existing terminal MIL-STDs and describe the key operational and waveform differences that impact the legacy terminals. Finally, we propose an approach for minimizing the impact to legacy users of transitioning to MUOS