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BAE SYSTEMS, Qinetiq and Roke Manor partner to create "Satcoms on the move"

18 Sep 2001

BAE Systems, in partnership with Roke Manor Research and QinetiQ, has developed and patented AGILe Information Transfer abilitY - AGILITY - a system to meet the increasing need for affordable, high bandwidth, secure and assured satellite communications (satcom) to-and-from military platforms on the move.

AGILITY supports satcoms for land vehicles, aircraft, unmanned aerial vehicles and naval vessels. It is the outcome of a UK Ministry of Defence-sponsored, jointly funded research programme to develop a military band electronically beam-steered antenna with no moving parts and no need for routine maintenance.

AGILITY features automatic satellite tracking with platform motion compensation and full uniform hemispheric antenna coverage. It offers near instant deployment and satellite acquisition times in a low cost, lightweight, 40cm sphere with intrinsic electronic counter-countermeasures features and the capability to operate in very high wind conditions.

The novel array geometry adopted gives the required hemispherical coverage, which cannot be achieved with a planar array. The antenna structure is based upon a modified dodecahedron comprising 40 identical triangular tiles, each of which contains six cross-dipole elements. This design approach provides a high proportion of active elements for any steer direction. The modular tile concept enables reconfiguration to meet semi-conformal applications for aircraft or unmanned aerial vehicles.

Beamforming and steering are performed at element level using custom MMIC (Monolithic Microwave Integrated Circuit) devices specifically designed for AGILITY. These act as digitally controlled phase shifters, as well as providing an LNA (Low Noise Amplifier) on receive and PA (Power Amplifier) on transmit.

For communications on the move, an on-board inertial navigation sensor provides real-time measurements of the vehicle attitude and heading. These are used to calculate a beam pointing angle that compensates for the vehicle orientation. From this, the phase data is calculated and distributed to the MMICs on each tile. This operation is conducted over 20 times per second to provide agile beam steering.

AGILITY is undergoing test evaluation and system integration at QinetiQ. The technology is expected to be available to customers within three years.