Home >> May 2020 Edition >> Heightening Performance, Security and Resiliency for Data-Intensive Critical COMMS
Heightening Performance, Security and Resiliency for Data-Intensive Critical COMMS
By Aviv Ronai, Vice President, Marketing and Product, NOVELSAT

 

The military, defense, security and emergency organizations rely on satellite communications (SATCOM) for their operations. Mission critical data and video connectivity is used for fixed communications, Communications-at-the-Halt (CATH), Communications-on-the-Pause (COTP), Communications-on-the-Move (COTM), aero (manned and unmanned), maritime, intelligence, Earth Observation (EO), weapon control, emergency and public safety applications.

Cyber threats against satellite communication have rapidly escalated during the last few years and will continue to advance in capabilities in the foreseeable future, as adversaries are working to intercept, exploit, degrade and deny communications capabilities.



With growing cybersecurity concerns, government organizations, agencies and bodies, as well as commercial integrators and contractors serving the government sector, require comprehensive SATCOM capabilities that can effectively mitigate such threats and reliably operate in contested, degraded and operationally-limited (CDO) environments.

NOVELSAT empowers mission critical SATCOM with the solutions and technologies that are necessary to face the future with confidence.

The company’s comprehensive systems capabilities provide an operationally secure, resilient, and effective satellite connectivity to support all forces and responders in carrying out their crucial missions.

Designed to deliver the highest levels of transmission security, robustness and resiliency, NOVELSAT offers comprehensive solutions to meet the growing applications and requirements of mission critical SATCOM. Securing the content, protecting the transmission and preventing interception, the firm’s comprehensive solutions provide a wide-ranging security suite that encompasses the functionalities and capabilities for communication security (COMSEC), transmission security (TRANSEC) and interference/jamming mitigation.

NOVELSAT has been at the forefront of satellite content connectivity technology and services for more than a decade and continues to be an innovator and developer of new satellite content connectivity technologies. The firm’s leadership foundations are built around proprietary waveform and premier receiver architectures that enable NOVELSAT to provide high-performance satellite transmission and space segment efficiency as well as greater resiliency and robustness.

Pioneering, expanding and enhancing end-to-end capabilities, the company presents best-in industry transmission and content security as well as the unique integration of cutting-edge video capabilities.

NOVELSAT is keenly focused on three key areas — performance, security and video — to address the growing need for higher data rates and extensive protection.

Boosting Performance Transmission
NOVELSAT NS4™, the most bandwidth-efficient waveform, boosts satellite transmission throughput and delivers more bits per Hz compared with any standard available, delivering up to 60 percent higher data rate than DVB-S2 systems and as much as 30 percent higher data rate than DVB-S2X systems.



Adding full bandwidth reuse allows full data rate doubling with lossless uplink and downlink on the same frequency band, driving spectral efficiency over 10 bit/Hz.

A topnotch receiver architecture enhances transmission robustness and flexibility and delivers very high Phase-Noise resiliency, high Doppler shift and rate resiliency as well as industry leading receiver sensitivity and very fast satellite/station handover, with frequency lock time of 1 mSec or less.

These capabilities enable seamless connectivity everywhere, under any condition, providing higher performance, availability and coverage, for demanding deployments such as poles areas, harsh weather conditions, mobility platforms (airborne, maritime, vehicles) as well as for challenging GEO, LEO and inclined orbits use cases.

Heightening Transmission Security & Robustness
NOVELSAT secured communications use COMSEC, TRANSEC and interference/jamming mitigation technologies to provide cyber, link and operational security for satellite connectivity.

The firm’s advanced multi-layer encryption assures data security by employing AES 256-bit encryption for full traffic encryption of payload, header and signaling.

A GPG (RSA-2048) encryption is then used to encrypt the AES keys and then to encrypt again the GPG keys.

The multi-layer encryption is complemented with a unique management tool that automatically performs dynamic key generation, over the-air (OTA) distribution, sites authentication, service validation and content entitlement.

For restricting system access and protect remote and on-prem management connectivity, extensive secured management sessions are provided, including encrypted HTTPS for web user interface, encrypted SSH (Secure Shell) for Command Line Interface (CLI) and encrypted SNMPv3.

High interference and jamming resiliency are achieved with a set of advanced detection mechanisms and mitigation algorithms, on top of the built-in (waveform and receiver) resiliency to interference and to other signal-disrupting impediment.

These capabilities excise narrowband, wideband and radar interferences as well as provides high resiliency to satellite blinding with dynamic saturation elimination. In addition, the use of a proprietary waveform elevates technical and operational barriers to adversaries.

Low Probability of Detection/Interception (LPD/LPI) are key capabilities required to protect against adversaries who try to obtain information through monitoring and analysis of the satellite transmission.

To mask any communications activity, NOVELSAT has implemented several solutions. Advanced carrier concealment, against hostile interception, is enabled by carrier echo cancellation and below noise level transmission and advanced traffic concealment, against hostile traffic variation analysis, is enabled by masking channel activity with dummy/idle data. In addition, traffic reception only at paired sites (uplink-downlink) is ensured by employing active, all digital, cancellation of locally-generated echo.

Integrating High Efficiency Video Encoding/Decoding/Transcoding
NOVELSAT boosts video transmission for mission critical applications with unique integration of cutting-edge video capabilities. Converting any video format or delivery standard to higher efficiency video coding enables to deliver more video streams and higher quality over a satellite channel.

Using highest efficiency video coding (HEVC) in conjunction with NOVELSAT NS4™ delivers unparalleled video data rates and efficiency, enabling up to 4 times more video content compared to MPEG4 with DVB-S2.

The optimized, all-in-one integration uniquely combines video encoding/decoding/transcoding, satellite transmission and comprehensive video security.

The advanced multi-layer encryption described above is enhanced with content entitlement, scheduling and blanking for multi-user and multi-privilege environments as well as supports watermarking for identifying leakage or breach.

Create Your Own Proprietary System
Enabling organizations to introduce their own proprietary transmission and functionality is an important element for further enhancing security and protection. NOVELSAT has designed unique capabilities to allow flexible customization. A dedicated customer programable System on Module (SOM) provides customers full control over a second CPU, enabling user defined software, API, GUI and functionality. In addition, unique transparent mode enables customers to work with their proprietary satellite transmission and uniquely define baseband payload structure and ACM algorithm.

Enhance and Protect
NOVELSAT is applying all these technologies and capabilities to enhance and protect data-intensive mission critical communications from intentional or unintentional interferences and threats. The high-performance solutions improve security, resiliency and robustness, as well as increase data rates, availability and coverage, enabling government customers to deliver on their mission. Already in deployment by leading government’s organizations and contractors, our technology helps our customers to meet their current and future challenges and makes their networks safe.

Addressing A Wide Range of Use Cases

Quadrupled Video Rates for VISINT Gathering (ISR) and Distribution
The improvements in sensor quality, the growing number of sensors on-board ISR platforms, and the need to distribute these live video feeds to multiple forces and authorities, mandates much higher transmission rates for video content.

To meet the required transmission rates without increasing satellite bandwidth, NOVELSAT provides an innovative all-in-one solution to delivers unparalleled video transmission capacity. Integrating high efficiency video coding (HEVC) and high efficiency transmission waveforms (NS4 or DVB-S2X) enables to deliver up to 4 times more video content for mission critical operations.

Adaptive Earth Observation Connectivity for Greater Download Speeds
The evolution of EO resolution and capabilities results in growing information collection which requires greater download speeds. Working with leading EO satellites, NOVELSAT high performance terminals delivers higher download volume per satellite pass coupled with high transmission robustness.

Using adaptive return channel for EO satellites, NOVELSAT terminals enables ACM operation and improved link margin to deliver higher data rates.

Transparent Cloud Connectivity Solution for IoT and Data Operations
More and more data from satellites is being sent to big cloud networks including imagery, sensing, monitoring, IoT and data transfer, making satellite data easier to access and process. Addressing data cloud connectivity, NOVELSAT pioneers open and flexible NFV-based cloud connectivity solution. Employing unique transparent mode, NOVELSAT solution enable virtualized connectivity agnostic to satellite transmission standards and proprietary implementations, streamlining data cloud satellite connectivity.

SIGINT Receivers on a Card for Intelligence Gathering
In an era of growing threats, intercepting satellite communications allow governments to enhance their national security. Enabling information interception and gathering, NOVELSAT offers high sensitivity PCIe-based SIGINT receiver cards, enabling easy integration into any PC-based platform. Agnostic to system vendor, air frame mapping method, payload encryption and ACM mechanism, NovelSat’s SIGINT receiver cards capture DVB-S2 and DVB-S2X satellite communications and stream raw data for traffic analysis.

www.novelsat.com

Aviv Ronai is the VP of marketing and product at NOVELSAT, a leading provider of next-generation content connectivity solutions for satellite communications. Aviv is responsible for building NOVELSAT's exceptional vision and brand, as well as formulating the company’s technological and strategic directions.

 


Recent News: NOVELSAT Solutions

Sometimes a motivator, something that you have to do to comply with company or government standards, turns out to be to your benefit. And this would seem to be the case for VRT (Vlaamse Radio- en Televisieomroeporganisatie), Belgium's national public-service broadcaster for the Flemish Region and Community. VRT needed to comply with the Belgium government's new regulation requiring CID insertion in satellite signals, that refers to a unique ID that is injected into video or data transmissions by a satellite modulator or modem so that an interfering carrier can be easily identified to enable quick resolution of interference situations.

NOVELSAT's solution, together with VP Media Solutions, a major Belgium reseller of broadcast solutions and services, includes NS3000 Professional Satellite Modems, with configurations supporting Carrier in Carrier (Carrier Eco Cancellation) and Dual Channel (ASI+IP) capability, all with built-in TCP Acceleration. The NovelSat modem offers 5 percent RoF with the DVB-S2 and S2X standard, and as low as 2 percent RoF with the NovelSat NS4 satellite waveform. These and other features make the NovelSat NS3000 a bandwidth-efficient modem.

VRT broadcast services include contribution, DTH channels, and radio, all via satellite and a fiber network, across Belgium and parts of The Netherlands and Luxembourg. They approached NOVELSAT with a request to replace their ground station links and contribution SNG transmission equipment. VRT had been transmitting using the outdated DVB-S2 satellite transmission standard with 20-35 percent RoF (Roll-off Factor).

Gary Drutin, NOVELSAT CEO said the NOVELSAT broadcast solution for VRT meets the customer’s needs for greater efficiency, bi-directional video and data transmission, CID insertion and more.

NOVELSAT is also collaborating with Gilat Telecom for quick restoration of internet connectivity following the West Africa Cable System (WACS) undersea cable cut. The severe cable damage caused internet downtimes and slow speeds that affected all internet providers in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Using NOVELSAT’s high capacity connectivity solutions, Gilat Telecom was able to quickly restore connectivity, providing its MNO and ISP customers a resilient and stable satellite network with nearly uninterrupted service and better customer experience.