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BAE SYSTEMS & Roke Manor Research expand "Satcoms-On-The-Move" to military aircraft applications

22 Jul 2002

BAE Systems and Roke Manor Research have expanded the capabilities of the AGILe Information Transfer abilitY — AGILITY — system to meet the long-range communications needs of military aircraft.

AGILITY is an innovative system to meet the increasing need for affordable, high bandwidth, secure and assured satellite communications to-and-from a wide range of moving military platforms. It has been developed from the output from a UK Ministry of Defence-sponsored, jointly-funded research programme to develop a military band, electronically beam-steered antenna for ground vehicles with no moving parts and no need for routine maintenance.

AGILITY features automatic tracking of communications satellites, with platform motion compensation and full uniform hemispheric antenna coverage. It offers near instant deployment and satellite acquisition times, and intrinsic electronic counter-countermeasures.

For aircraft use, AGILITY is designed in a quasi-conformal configuration of modular transmit/receive tiles. The novel array geometry provides the required hemispherical coverage, unobtainable with a planar array, with a high proportion of active elements for any steer direction.

For communications on the move, an on-board inertial navigation sensor provides real-time measurements of the platform's altitude and heading, enabling beam pointing to compensate for aircraft orientation. This agile beam steering operation is conducted over 20 times per second.

Beamforming and steering are performed at element level using customised 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.

This new development complements the existing ground vehicle-mounted design for use by land commanders and their staffs.