The European Space Agency (ESA) is supporting the European Commission with the development of GOVSATCOM-driven technologies under the Connectivity Secure Communications (CSC) framework.
Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Electronic Warfare (EW), Jamming, and Antiamming have been crucial topics, therefore, governments, MoDs and agencies have prepared for EW in a far more agile manner.
IRIS2 is the coming European GOVSATCOM multi-orbit, sovereign network for European countries’ government users and the ESA has a program to expedite the developments of IRIS2 within the CSC framework.
The project Phase1 Payload COMSC/TRANSEC Performance Testbed — won by INTEGRASYS as prime with the support of Inster-Grupo Oesía and UPM as subcontractor partners — is to test current and future payloads to be secure for government use.
This project is focused on the development of a payload testbed to evaluate the performance of secure communication functions. This enables the study of the most critical interference scenarios and the identification of countermeasures to validate the payload performance, prior to the launch of the full constellation.
The testbed will be representative of the LEO payload subsystems with microwave equipment for signal reception/routing/processing, data converters, and On-Board Processor (OBP) functions.
Another critical role of the testbed is to serve as a platform to execute interference monitoring, detection, mitigation, and geolocation techniques. INTEGRASYS has been an expert with these technologies for more than 34 years.
The objectives of the project…
- To develop a testbed to evaluate payload COMSEC/TRANSEC performance for secure communication functions
- To evaluate the robustness/resistance of the payload RF and digital chains to external interference/jamming
- To evaluate payload operational reconfigurability options to respond to jamming threats
- To provide inputs to reliability and availability assessments at a system level
Alvaro Sanchez, INTEGRASYS CEO, said, “We are honored to be selected under open competition by ESA to provide tailor capabilities with the support of our engineers and our partners to fully comply with the requirements set by ESA for testing the future secure Govsatcom IRIS2 multiorbit payloads; over the years INTEGRASYS has become expert on protecting space and ground assets for governments, we are very proud to continue the support of Europe and specially IRIS2 Govsatcom programs, from birth to continuing in the first testbed, and hopefully to planning deployment and operation. We see how partnering with Inster and UPM makes the proposition stronger and brings more knowhow and expertise to outstandingly deliver the required capabilities for our governments and agencies.”
Miguel Diaz of Inster-Grupo Oesia said, “Inster-Grupo Oesía will contribute to the consortium with the expertise acquired over the last five years in hybrid Electronically Steerable Antennas (ESA), working on several European projects with relevant actors’ leaders in antenna beamforming techniques. The know-how that Inster-Grupo Oesía is acquiring in the design and manufacture of equipment for the Eutelsat-OneWeb network will be key to fulfilling the requirements of the IRIS2 program, starting with the design and implementation of the ESA antenna part integrated into the Payload Comsec Transec Performance & anti-jamming testbed.”