Viasat Inc has successfully upgraded the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's (NATO) Ultra High Frequency (UHF) satellite communications control stations to comply with the new Integrated Waveform (IW) baseline.
Using Viasat's Visual Integrated Satcom Information, Operation and Networking (VISION) software platform, NATO gains greater communications interoperability, scalability and flexibility across legacy and next-generation platforms, which it expects will significantly enhance warfighters' situational awareness and operational insights on the battlespace.
Viasat's VISION platform is the first commercially-available software package to simultaneously support all 25-kHz legacy Demand-Assigned Multiple-Access (DAMA) and next-generation IW networks and services. The platform has enabled the following benefits for NATO:
- Faster communications: reduced time to access software from 90 seconds to 4 seconds;
- Better reliability: offered greater reliability when compared to previous waveforms;
- Improved functionality: doubled NATO's channel efficiency; and
- Enhanced bandwidth: gave network operators real-time capabilities to reconfigure UHF satellite networks to meet new mission profiles on-the-fly.
The VISION platform provides a single, user-friendly network management interface for legacy DAMA and IW services, inclusive of the ability to locally or remotely manage and control ground station networks, monitor status and system performance, track event/alarm management situations and add/remove services when missions change.
By enabling interoperability between DAMA and IW platforms, NATO, can double its channel efficiency without additional investment in the UHF space segment. This optimization doubles the number of users, giving more warfighters access to reliable, high-quality, resilient voice and data communications.
Click here to know more about the VISION platform.
