Why Space Force needs a hybrid approach to satellite communications
As the U.S. Space Force modernizes protected SATCOM, the ground segment is becoming just as critical to mission success.
By Brian Somers, Head of Aerospace & Defense, Optical Zonu
Programs like the Protected Tactical Enterprise Service (PTES) illustrate why. PTES is designed to provide the Space Force with anti-jam, low-probability-of-intercept communications using the Protected Tactical Waveform (PTW) while supporting operations across Wideband Global SATCOM today and commercial geostationary and medium Earth orbit (GEO and MEO) constellations in the future.
Its Joint Hub architecture must securely connect multiple orbital regimes, teleports, gateways, and mission systems into a single protected communications enterprise. Space Force is increasingly leveraging commercial SATCOM capacity alongside government-owned systems so protected transport, waveform security, gateway resilience, and mission-assured ground infrastructure become critical to operating across mixed networks in contested environments.
For Protected Tactical Waveform over Commercial (PTWoC) and Joint Hub-like architectures, the ground segment is not just a pass-through layer. It is where antenna siting, RF transport, timing, monitoring, gateway integration, and survivable access to protected communications converge.
As Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance (ISR) and other missions expand, the challenge of communications evolves from simply moving data to transporting increasingly fragile RF signals without degrading the information they carry before processing even begins. For primes and integrators, RF transport is a design decision and not just cabling.
Higher frequencies make signal conversion a critical topic
Migration toward Ka-, Q-, and V-band communications represents one of the most significant advances in military SATCOM. These frequencies offer the broader bandwidth needed to support high-definition video, intelligence feeds, autonomous platforms, and increasing data-intensive operations.
However, the ability to transport extremely high frequencies (EHF) creates growing pains for network operators. Millimeter-wave signals experience greater attenuation, tighter link margins, and increased sensitivity to phase errors, interference, and alignment. While satellites continue pushing higher into the spectrum, preserving signal integrity across the ground segment becomes increasingly difficult.
These challenges apply across large parabolic gateways, 2.4-meter and larger terminals, VSAT systems, ESAs, phased-array terminals, and deployable SATCOM kits where antennas and processing equipment may need to be physically separated. There are questions about where to down convert, what Intermediate Frequency (IF) bandwidth must be preserved, and how to move that wideband IF between antennas, terminals, gateways, and protected equipment spaces without degrading the signal.
Because of this, the infrastructure connecting antennas, teleports, and mission processing systems requires a different approach than its lower spectrum counterparts. An approach that pairs the best of analog and digital infrastructure.
Digital processing isn't the same as digital transport
There is no question that digital technologies are indispensable to Space Force. Encryption, software-defined networking, AI, dynamic resource allocation, and cloud-native operations all rely on digital processing.
But digital processing and digital transport have different meanings. When RF signals are digitized immediately after reception, they must pass through analog-to-digital conversion, serialization, buffering, synchronization, and often additional conversions before returning to the RF domain.
Each step increases complexity, consumes power, and introduces latency. This was sometimes an issue previously, but by moving to EHF, like Q-, V- and Ka-bands, the associated instantaneous bandwidth is an essential focus area for the Space Force.
Those digital conversion tradeoffs often make sense once information reaches centralized computing resources. They are less advantageous when the priority is preserving high-frequency RF signals as faithfully as possible during transport. This becomes especially important when antenna sites, gateway equipment, protected processing spaces, or command-and-control nodes are separated by hundreds of meters to many kilometers.
Hybrid communications preserve what matters most
PTWoC architectures increasingly benefit from viewing analog RF transport and digital processing as complementary layers of the same mission system.
Analog transport excels at moving native RF signals over long distances while preserving their relative phase, timing, and amplitude characteristics. Digital systems excel once signals reach centralized processing, where routing, security, analytics, networking, and mission applications take place.
This hybrid approach allows each technology to perform the role it was designed to do. One technology that exemplifies this philosophy in SATCOM is Radio Frequency-over-Fiber (RFoF). Instead of immediately digitizing the RF waveform, RFoF transports the native signal directly over optical fiber. The result is extremely low latency, immunity to electromagnetic interference, support for exceptionally wide instantaneous bandwidths, and significantly lower signal loss than traditional coaxial transport. Only after the signal reaches a centralized, resource-rich environment does digitization occur, enabling advanced processing without sacrificing the fidelity of the original waveform.
This philosophy aligns with where satellite communications are headed. Ground stations increasingly connect government satellites with commercial GEO, MEO, Low Earth Orbit (LEO) and emerging constellations. Teleports are evolving into intelligent network hubs rather than simple RF relay points. Distributed antennas, phased arrays, and protected gateways must all operate with precise timing and synchronization.
Every unnecessary conversion between those systems introduces another opportunity for latency, synchronization errors, or signal degradation. As we see more distributed architectures, minimizing those conversion points becomes another way of improving resilience.
Building communications around mission requirements
Many people view analog as “less than” digital but the reality is that the future of military SATCOM will never be just one or the other. It will be hybrid because the mission demands it.
Digital technologies will continue enabling encryption, AI-driven network management, software-defined infrastructure, and advanced mission applications. Analog transport will continue providing deterministic performance, phase coherence, and low-latency signal transport that high-frequency RF systems need to operate successfully whether that’s in expeditionary environments, VSAT sites, shipboard installations or gateway facilities. The most resilient communications architecture will preserve the signal as much as possible until digital processing creates the greatest value.
On the commercial side – the currently deployed broadest wavelength capability Satcom system deploys RFoF for the feeder link (between antennas and gateways, both uplink and downlink) successfully with the instantaneous bandwidth on the order of 6GHz (the based band is at Ka band).
For Space Force, success will depend on building a ground infrastructure capable of moving protected signals across complex networks without compromising their integrity along the way. As satellite communications continue evolving toward higher frequencies and multi-orbit architectures, network operators must be highly intentional about using analog where signal fidelity matters most and using digital where computational power delivers the greatest advantage.
