Phasor has taken a critical step forward in the productization of their groundbreaking flat panel, electronically steered antenna (ESA) system. The company has demonstrated the transmission of live HD video over the Intelsat 903 satellite from their test site in Essex, UK. The Phasor team has spent several months carrying out detailed beam pattern measurements on the system. This has taken place in the company’s near-field and far-field test ranges, ensuring that the dynamic beam forming adheres to the regulatory requirements for live transmissions. Following the lab tests, the 8-module Tx (transmit) system (equivalent in aperture area to a 67cm parabolic dish) was deployed to Phasor’s outdoor test site.
Maritime IT services integrator, OmniAccess is partnering with Phasor to bring the electronically steered antenna to the super yacht mobile broadband market, and provide its ground station and satellite capacity for testing purposes. The link was successfully established and has been running flawlessly for over 2 weeks.
The 8-module system achieved an impressive uplink performance of 2 Mbps under the test plan, which involved transmissions from a moving platform demanding rapid beam scanning. The Phasor antenna was able to transmit a full HD video stream using efficient MODCODs (Modulation and Coding techniques), avoiding the need for any form of inefficient spread-spectrum techniques and maintained perfect pointing with no ASI (Adjacent Satellite Interference) throughout.
Based on the achieved Intelsat 903 satellite performance, and the known performance of uplink-efficient HTS satellites, this small eight-module array would be able to close return links of well over 15 Mbps. An aperture equivalent to a 1m dish (16 panel system), would achieve a Tx throughput of over 60 Mbps.
This very low profile antenna provides high-bandwidth connectivity in a more reliable and robust way. The antenna is solid-state, with no moving parts so satellite signals are tracked electronically. Its low-profile, sleek look is ideal for the yacht market, eliminating the need for visually unappealing radomes spread around the vessel. The terminal can be scaled to achieve performances better than a 2.4 m parabolic dish, making it very well suited to meet the demanding communications requirements of the super-yacht market.
Phasor is extremely positive about the future and look forward to take this high bandwidth connectivity to their target mobile broadband markets.
