Cancelling Interference in Asia

Madrid, Spain, June 1, 2022--The Asia-Pacific market is generating a great impact on the satellite manufacturing and launch market segments. NSR forecasts over US$ 105.7 billion for 9,200 satellites to be generated between 2020-2030 from the region, a quarter of the global satellite orders. The interest in the satellite industry for the Asian market is tangible.

Over the last years, due to the pandemic, the Asian market has experienced considerable growth in the number of satellite users, in order to have resilient communication across the continent, especially now that the continent is increasing its investment in the defence sector. In 2020, the APAC region invested 528,000 million USD in defence (an increase of 2.5% compared to the previous year), according to the Stockholm International Place Research Institute (Sipri). The new approach of the Asian countries is to cover representatively their government and defense needs. Therefore, from the satellite industry’s perspective, it is an opportunity to provide the defence sector with reliable satellite communication. The importance of the ground segment in the case of ensuring a secure ecosystem is mandatory, surveillance & reconnaissance capabilities are linked to resilient communication among the forces. Due to the conflict in the EMEA region, and the war-like situations across different parts of the world, and tensions within APAC countries, the investments in communication infrastructure for military purposes have grown significantly in Asia. Ground defence communication systems and smart solutions ensure the safety of the troops against imminent threats, the main values that these types of solutions offer to the defence sector are the maximization of survivability, reliable connectivity, and capacity of manoeuvre.

This incipient need to guarantee secure communications in the defence field has led to an opportunity for new technologies that could be integrated into cyber security, Command & Control, and C4ISR, systems, in order to ensure a reliable environment for military communications in hostile environments, which are subjected to extreme conditions. A challenge that is commonly faced in Asia’s defence communications is the ones derived from RF interference (RFI). The above-mentioned smart solutions on the ground must be the additional weapon for the troops to be connected resiliently. The resulting technologies must be fully effective, in real-time and in any situation, and fully compliant with the militaries’ demands for service requirements. RF Interferences are treated as a threat; however, the problem is that, due to the congested communications environment, there are intentional interferences that are extremely dangerous due to the disruption they cause, as well as unintentional interferences that have become a critical issue when military activity is located in a conflict area with, different networks coexisting. Therefore, the most recommendable technologies when it comes to RFI problems are the interference cancellers, even though there are lots of anti-jamming techniques, they are not rapid and reliable enough, and the idea of cancelling the interference is quite innovative within the Asian market.

The most innovative Interference Canceller System is CLEANRF developed by INTEGRASYS, and awarded as the Government Mobile Innovation 2022, by the MSUA at the Satellite Show 2022 in Washington. The smart solution allows the detection, identification, separation, and cancellation of RFI sources that affect the service signal to be processed by receivers or transceivers operating in satellite links. CLEANRF can effectively cancel a significant number of harmful interference sources on satellite-to-ground links for both GSO and NGSO satellites. The solution enables secure and robust communications, protecting the network terminals from the most common and harmful interference sources. The new innovative interference canceller provides an elegant, fully automated interface to solve the most common and harmful interference problems affecting the Asian market, maximizing the amount of usable clean spectrum. Communications through these types of links are usually called "protected communications" and typical users are those that manage critical infrastructures, government assets, communications for security forces etc., as well as all satellites/payload control operators. Moreover INTEGRASYS also has jamming technologies that can attack communication systems when it is required.

The Asian market is investing in satellite communications for the defence sector on the ground, and the new technologies need to be aligned with this new approach, therefore the best complement for security systems are smart tools that can be combined in order to ensure resilient connectivity among the commands.     

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 Alvaro Sanchez is the CEO of Integrasys and Marquess of Antella (Noble Title from 17th century in Spain). Alvaro is a Software and Industrial engineer by European University and holds a Master Degree in Management, Sales & Marketing by ESIC Business School. Alvaro during the last 10 years has worked at Integrasys as Management, Sales Director and Executive roles were he was very successful growing the sales, revenue, profit and responsibilities within the company; and previous to that he was working at CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research as a RF Engineer measuring timing in a Nanosecond Synchronization for measuring the Neutrino Speed.  The Noble Title that he hosts, is coming in his heritage from 1649 from his ancestor Nicolo Palavicino, given by Phillip IV in Sicily for the Antella region near Florence. He can be reached at alvaro.sanchez@integrasys-sa.com