Company Spotlight: WORK Microwave

Holzkirchen, Germany, September 30, 2024--WORK Microwave, one of the leading manufacturers of advanced satellite communications and RF equipment, held their customer event last September at their headquarters in Holzkirchen, Germany, a picturesque town wedged between the Bavarian Alps and Munich. The two-day event featured presentations, product demos, panel discussions, a tour of their facilities and plenty of networking activities.  Over 50 participants, representing WORK Microwave's customers and partners came from as far as North America, Africa and Asia and of course, all from over Europe and the Middle East. 

WORK Microwave executive Thomas Wiesner leading a group tour of their facilities.

The event showcased cutting-edge technical developments such as Optical Communications, Virtual Ground Stations and Direct RF where WORK Microwave has invested in the development of innovative products and solutions. "Our customer event was an opportunity for us to highlight our latest offerings not just in satellite communications but in defense electronics and industrial sensors and measurement, among others. Specifically for the satcom market, we see digitalization and virtualization as key drivers and we aim to maintain our leading position in these key segments with products compliant with the new Digital IF (DIFI) standards,” said Thomas Fröhlich, CEO of WORK Microwave. 

WORK Microwave showcased its Virtual Ground Station solution based on a modular design  which provides end-to-end virtualization of ground station infrastructure featuring conversion of received RF signals in all possible frequency bands into a digital signal compliant with DIFI standards, separation of digitized channels and cloud-based wideband signal processing using virtualized software modem.

Another innovative solution presented at the event is Direct to RF,  which  directly digitizes/de-digitize the actual RF signal without an analogue frequency converter. This eliminates the need for Block Upconverters (BUCs). This approach provides higher flexibility and less hardware variants will be needed, enable scaling effects, decreasing overall costs as soon as Direct RF market share increases said Josef Lex, Vice-President of Engineering at WORK Microwave. 

Several presentations were devoted to Optical or Laser Communications featuring the German Space Agency-DLR and companies such as ASA and TESAT Satcom. Speakers extolled the benefits and advantages of optical communications which include high data rates of 1 Gbps to potentially up to 1 Tbps, excellent power efficiency and high data security, among others. 

The WORK Microwave company event featured among others, a panel discussion on "Future Technology and Market Trends in Civil and Military Satcom"  moderated by Virgil Labrador, Editor-in-Chief of Satelltie Markets and Research and panelists from left: Marke Clinger of Kratos Defense and Security, Rainer Wansch of Fraunhofer Institute, Richard Denny of Kacific and Thomas Fröhlich, CEO of WORK Microwave.

The two-day event was capped off with a  panel discussion on "Future Technology and Market Trends in Civil and Military Satcom"  moderated by Virgil Labrador, Editor-in-Chief ofSatellite Markets and Research which included satellite executives Marke Clinger of Kratos Defense and Security, Rainer Wansch of Fraunhofer Institute, Richard Denny of Kacific and Thomas Fröhlich, CEO of WORK Microwave.  

The panelists were generally bullish about the prospects for the future of the satellite industry.  They identified the key trends that will be driving the industry in the next few years including, as already presented and in previous sessions, such as Virtualization, Digitalization, Software-Defined Satellites, Cloud-based Services, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the growing influence of the telecom industry in satellites.  The panel also identified some key challenges posed by the new Low Earth Orbit (LEO) constellations disrupting the market. Despite the challenges ahead, the panel ended on a positive note with the influx of  many innovations coming to market, some of which were highlighted in the presentations demos during the event, and the recognition  of the resilience that the industry has demonstrated time and again in previous crises.