AvL Technologies has been selected by SES to develop and produce 2.4m X-Y Ka-band transportable antennas to operate with O3b mPOWER, SES’s second-generation medium earth orbit (MEO) constellation. The antennas are now in development and a pre-production prototype is featured in AvL’s booth this week at the SATELLITE 2022 show.
AvL is developing two types of transportable 2.4m X-Y antennas for O3b mPOWER to be used as high-throughput user terminals or transportable gateways. The X-Y antennas will track O3b mPOWER satellites in medium earth orbit (MEO) and provide direct overhead satellite tracking. The antennas operate in pairs and also feature enhanced retrace speeds that are optimized for robust network operational performance.
The AvL antennas will allow SES’s customers, ranging from governments to mobile network operators, to leverage the soon-to-be launched O3b mPOWER system that will provide unprecedented flexibility, performance coverage, and scale. The software-driven O3b mPOWER communications system is capable of delivering secure and intelligent connectivity services from tens of megabits to multiple gigabits per second to any customers who require rugged, portable land mobile applications across the globe.
AvL and SES have a longstanding relationship of collaborating on antennas as AvL developed 85cm, 1.2m and 2.4m terminals that operate with O3b, SES’s first-generation network. AvL recently upgraded and certified three traditional AvL GEO terminals to provide field-upgradeable (re-configurable) MEO operability on the SES first-generation O3b network, including 1.0m and 1.2m vehicle-mount terminals and a new 2.2m ultra lightweight flyaway terminal.
“We’re thrilled to continue the long relationship between SES and AvL,” said Mike Proffitt, President of AvL Technologies. “Together AvL and SES will continue to innovate and take SATCOM to new dimensions, with the output being impressive new high bandwidth applications suited for AvL’s rugged and resilient antennas with O3b mPOWER intelligent connectivity services.”