新一代空间通信

From the first launch of Sputnik in Oct 1957, all orbiting assets have required communications for Sputnik 1 this was a simple radio signal for 3 weeks until its three silver zinc batteries ran out.

As the world moves to an era of “New” Space, communications are often a critical part of the satellite design allowing advanced telecom platforms to deliver services such as the Space X / T Mobile initiative to provide ubiquitous cellular coverage across the United States or Earth Observation platforms to provide increasingly detailed data on our planet.

The challenges of satellite maintenance and testing

Unfortunately, “truck rolls” to fix malfunctioning satellites or degraded communications are not an option. The design and testing of components and software is critical and robust as once you are in orbit it is extremely difficult to repair your platform, and even then, it is likely to be a communications-based resolution.

The impact of the convergence of miniaturization in electronics, advances in materials and manufacturing, make low Earth orbit feasible for businesses of all sizes and TRL’s This revolution is extending to the military, intelligence, and geopolitical realms, which are transforming as space plays a rapidly increasing role.

The impact of technological advancements on space access and military applications

From an economic perspective Space is a huge contributor with the US Space sector contributing $131.8 billion to the US GDP in 2022, this was a 2.3% increase in real GDP, which was faster than the overall US economy’s 1.9% growth rate. The United Kingdom impact is even more striking with 17.8% of the UK GDP reliant on satellite services. The UK Govt estimates the economic impact of £7.6 billion even if simple GPS navigation went down for 7 days

Whilst it easy to comprehend the impact from economic perspective the military and geopolitical impacts are far reaching and compounded by a lack of any international law or regulation. The later point will be explored later in this paper but does point to Cyber capabilities.

The military uses a command & control approach across multiple domains and many militaries are assessing what command & control looks like when coordinating and testing across the two newest domains Space and Cyber this is often referred to as C5 ISR. Against this framework the impact of Denied Degraded Intermittent or Lost (DDIL) communications are huge, and many organizations look to robustly test the impact of applications across these DDIL networks.

Against this background Calnex Solutions have developed capabilities to address the challenges of ground-based test platforms in conjunction with agencies, military’s, academia and businesses to develop a platform that can really test the delivery of data and communications, mimicking real world conditions in real time. Organisations have used Calnex NE-ONE platform to replicate conditions such lunar communications, military TDMA based networks (both line of sight and space based) and Satellite Communications.

Addressing cybersecurity challenges and future testing solutions

Finally, the lack of regulation and international law creates a vacuum in which space-based platforms are vulnerable to cyber-attack, the appetite for projectile destruction of assets is very low especially given the likely impact of debris in increasingly crowded orbits and could lead unintended consequences. Against that background many organisations are looking to the NE-ONE to replicate real world conditions within cyber ranges as communications have a material effect of the ability to defend or disable a satellite, this is even more relevant in LEO constellations where lines of communication are constantly varying and other effects such as doppler or even simple weather patterns can change the communication profile and attack surface.

In summary, the use of NE-ONE is a critical component in any space testing regime, Digital Twin or Cyber Range.