The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) has awarded Hughes Network Systems (HUGHES) with a Wideband Communications Architecture Study (WCAS) contract. Under the contract, Hughes will investigate a wide-ranging commercial perspective on how different satellite transports can interoperate for wideband government applications and thus plan for resilient, cost-effective satellite communications (SATCOM) capabilities.
HUGHES will help to create a secure and affordable Wideband Communications Architecture (WCA) that can facilitate varied and redundant space and ground transports, delivering a design analysis of wide-beam, spot-beam, and on-board processing satellites, including GEO/LEO and airborne platforms. An overall goal is to expand the flexibility and interoperability of U.S. government satellite communications capabilities, allowing DoD's various applications to operate over its own satellite network as well as leveraging commercial satellites, gateways, waveforms, and terminals to increase mission assurance.
The company is proposing to leverage a Multi-Modem Adaptor to enable multiple service providers to contribute towards a resilient SATCOM service that will also automate provisioning and improve network operational efficiency.
According to HUGHES, the new contract reinforces their growing leadership in efficient defense and intelligence-related high-throughput satellite, ground infrastructure, and automation technologies and they now look forward to supporting the DoD in helping define innovative and interoperable satellite system architectures for flexible and robust network management for contested environments.
