In today’s military applications supported by satellite communications, security, information assurance and link efficiency are inextricably linked. Military operations are becoming more complex as conflict areas grow more dispersed on a global scale, with a growing need to support a diversity of on-the-move, on-the-pause and fixed platforms. At the same time, security threats are becoming more apparent, raising concerns that nations, terrorist groups, criminals and individual hackers can jam, interrupt and endanger military operations.

In satellite communications, most individual nations cannot generate significant capabilities by themselves. Instead, European nations can generate increased capabilities through cooperation and collaboration. Several pooling and sharing initiatives have already been kicked off in the European defence context to face challenges related to the fragmentation of supply and demand, the assured secure access to satellite communications and the changing environment.

The complexity of dispersed military operations translates into requirements to have access to complex global satellite communication networks with a mix of different satellite constellations, networks and services to support a wide variety of military applications. Security and resilience are key features of today’s military satellite networks and are paired with efficiency to cope with the increased data demand of bandwidth hungry services such as ISR and situational awareness, the growing use of on-the-move applications, and the need for seamless end-user experience during operations. However, military satellite communication networks with these wide-ranging requirements face an increased risk of ill-intentioned acts and cyber-attacks such as jamming, signal spoofing and interception attempts.

A key element to tackle this security challenge is the implementation of a protected, resilient and secure satellite communication waveform for fully transparent, processed transparent and the new generation processed interactive transponders, which at the same time responds to the operational requirements and allows for interoperability during joint operations with allies.

The great majority of Member States do not have independent access to secure satellite communication waveforms, although they also engage in military operations in a national or multinational (EU, NATO, UN peacekeeping, etc.) context. The investment for developing a protected waveform cannot be carried out by a single nation alone and requires a multinational development approach in a European context with the aim to establish a European Protected Waveform (EPW).

Specific objective

This topic aims specifically at further developing a European interoperable protected waveform for satellite military communications that can be used by different EU nations individually or together in a joint operational context (EU, NATO, multi-nation missions). Such European Protected Waveform (EPW) should in particular target efficiency, security, affordability and interoperability of satellite communications. The EPW should be license-based and flexibly adapted according to the application, service or platform (fixed, on-the-move or on-the-pause) during peacetime or in operations.

Next to the waveform, related technologies should be developed to increase the security and resilience (via integrated multi-layered approach) and adopt the EPW on on-board processing satellites as well as to cater for next-generation technologies.

The targeted development should therefore be undertaken with five key considerations in mind:

1/ European autonomy and cooperation between Member States

The EPW should be capable of increasing the autonomy of Europe and of reducing the dependence on non-European satellite communication technologies for military operations with mission critical and sensitive information. At the same time, it should allow for interoperability between EU nations in a joint operational context to support the exchange of mission critical information and improve the efficiency of the operations.

2/ Affordable and efficient satellite services

The EPW should be affordable and include the latest efficiency satellite communication waveform, networking and equipment technologies to save OPEX (reduce bandwidth costs, require less resources for planning) and CAPEX (reduce equipment cost) compared to current existing expensive (proprietary) military satellite modems. The EPW should include already available innovative Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) satellite communication technologies (e.g., DVB-S2X waveform standard) in combination with the latest security and resilience technologies. There should no longer be a trade-off between the efficiency of the waveform and security. As such, high throughput demands should be achieved even with small satellite terminals using a limited amount of satellite bandwidth.

3/ Flexibility and scalability

The EPW should be portable on different modems with different form factors (board, modem, terminal), different platforms (fixed, on-the-move, on-the-pause) and be used across multiple types of satellite communication networks, different types of satellite constellations (LEO, MEO, GEO, HEO, high-throughput satellites, spot beams, regional and global beams), transponders (fully transparent-, processed transparent- and processed interactive, including software defined radio ones) and different network architectures (VSAT, point-to-point, mesh). At the same time, the EPW should be operational in different satellite frequency bands (at least C-band, X-band, Ku-band and Ka-band) and exchange, broadcast, multicast, unicast or relay a large range of satellite services and applications, including those requiring low latency, from low to very high data rates.

4/ Innovation

The EPW development should not just be a copy and paste of existing waveform solutions, licenses and technologies. The EPW proposal should be ambitious and innovative, combining the individual strengths of different nations and different members in the European satellite communication industry. The EPW programme should be open to support future requirements and capabilities needed.

5/ Security and resilience

The main feature of the EPW should be the increase in protection and resilience of the waveform to ensure secure information exchange over satellite for mission critical communications. Based on different threat analysis and Concept of Operations (CONOPS) definitions, the EPW development should focus on building satellite links that are resistant to electronic- and cyber-attacks, such as jamming, signal spoofing, eavesdropping and interception attempts. In addition, satellite link outages caused by rain fade, atmospheric and extra-atmospheric (relevant space weather events) conditions, or on-the-move communication challenges should be reduced to a minimum. The EPW activity should investigate how different security levels can be offered towards different military end users depending on their security requirements, their daily operations and the budgets available.

Scope:

Proposals must address system prototyping of the baseband equipment (satellite modem), the on-board satellite active transponder and ancillary systems, as well as the testing of all prototypes (modems, on board active transponders and ancillary systems) operating the EPW in a controlled and operational military environment.

Types of activities

The following table lists the types of activities which are eligible for this topic, and whether they are mandatory or optional (see Article 10(3) EDF Regulation):

Accordingly, the proposals must cover at least the following tasks as part of mandatory activities:

• System prototyping:
  • Develop a breadboard of an SDR Interactive Transponder implementing the EPW enhanced secure mechanisms that includes some of the components and electrical and functional (including digital) performances in order to reach TRL 6;
  • Implement the EPW in SDR/ground-based equipment.
• Testing:
  • Verify the SDR Interactive Transponder prototype in an end-to-end representative laboratory environment, including anti-jamming capability, user access control (authorised user admission and unauthorised user rejection), signals activity masking, ability to operate in GNSS-degraded or denied environment;
  • Test end-to-end service in laboratory environment;
  • Demonstrate end-to-end service in satellite environment (TRL 6).

The proposals must substantiate synergies and complementarities with foreseen, ongoing or completed activities in the field of satellite communication for defence applications, notably those described in the call topic EDF-2021-SPACE-D-EPW related to a European protected waveform and accompanying technologies for resilient satellite communications against jamming, as well as with those described in the European Defence Industrial Development Programme (EDIDP) work programme 2019-2020 relating to the European Secure Software defined Radio (ESSOR) and those targeted by the new EU Secure Satellite Constellation IRIS².

Moreover:

• projects addressing activities referred to in point (d) above must be based on harmonised defence capability requirements jointly agreed by at least two Member States or EDF associated countries (or, if studies within the meaning of point (c) are still needed to define the requirements, at least on the joint intent to agree on them)
• projects addressing activities referred to in points (e) to (h) above, must be:
  • supported by at least two Member States or EDF associated countries that intend to procure the final product or use the technology in a coordinated manner, including through joint procurement

and

• • based on common technical specifications jointly agreed by the Member States or EDF associated countries that are to co-finance the action or that intend to jointly procure the final product or to jointly use the technology (or, if design within the meaning of point (d) is still needed to define the specifications, at least on the joint intent to agree on them).

For more information, please check section 6.

Functional requirements

The proposed product and technologies should meet the following functional requirements:

System requirements:

• The EPW should be accessible to small, mid-sized and large Member States and EDF Associated Countries seeking to embrace today’s and future challenges related to increased throughput demand over satellite, dispersed theatres, joint operations, mobility and new security threats;
• In accordance with this integrated multi-layered security and resiliency approach for military satellite networks, the EPW development should fulfil requirements at the level of the waveform, the baseband equipment (terminals, modems, hubs, networks) and end-to-end satellite network level including multi-band/multi-frequency terminals, anti-jamming technologies, interference mitigation, network diversity, network security and cyber technologies. The demarcation point is the edge router of the satellite network which connects the hubs, gateways and modems with outside networks or the internet.
• Additionally, it should be feasible to implement the EPW also on existing and operational telecommunication satellites;
• The EPW should be resilient and maximise service availability to ensure continuity of seamless operations;
• The EPW should have performances considering the throughput demands of today and the future;
• The EPW should support pooling and sharing service models of both waveform and equipment that can be implemented for different operations;
• The EPW should apply to the best extent possible the set of applicable standards of 5G non-terrestrial network (5G NTN) within 3GPP and take into account the new use cases and technologies linked to Machine-to-Machine (M2M), Internet-of-Things (IoT), orchestration, cloud-services, the connected soldier and smart defence.

Protected Waveform Requirements:

• The EPW should be defined as a standard to enable interoperability in joint operations.
• Terminals from multiple vendors should be able to support the EPW and be compatible with it;
• The EPW should be affordable, based on the best practices of COTS and government or military-grade waveforms;
• The EPW should implement the most efficient SATCOM technologies to obtain the best performance out of a satellite link;
• The EPW should support a range of different multi-orbit satellite constellations ((V)HTS, wideband, military, commercial, government, HEO, GEO, MEO, LEO), satellite architectures (pure transponder, partially or fully processed) and frequency bands (C-band, X-band, Ku-band, [mil- and civ-] Ka-band) with extension to Q-/V-band to support future SATCOM constellations) and have the capability to roam across the different satellite networks in a seamless manner;
• The EPW should be easy to port on other software defined modems or hubs;
• The EPW should be flexible to support multiple governmental and defence applications that require different levels of security and latency;
• The EPW should implement functionality to support (a growing amount of) on-the-move and on-the-pause platforms connected over the satellite with a need for mobility features (Doppler compensations, spreading modulation, small and flat antenna support, beam switching, beam hopping, etc.);
• The EPW should be able to operate in GNSS-denied environments;
• The EPW should provide adequate protection against intrusion, hacking, jamming, traffic monitoring and eavesdropping;
• The EPW should mask and obscure traffic patterns across the satellite link that could give away activity-related information on ongoing operations and assets;
• The EPW should consider a wide range of throughput requirements and satellite bandwidth sizes (symbol rates) and automatically adapt to changing environments and service requirements;
• The EPW should offer seamless services over resilient satellite links against fading and shadowing effects, unintentional and intentional interference such as jamming (fixed and sweeping);

Multi-layered security & resilience requirements (extended capabilities):

The EPW should be embedded in an integrated multi-layered security and resilience approach to increase the protection of mission critical military or governmental satellite networks. As such, an overall approach needs to be envisaged to align the EPW development with the complementary security and resiliency technologies for ground and space segments, leading to the following additional requirements:

The EPW should be integrated into a larger multi-layered security & resilience architecture that:

• Contains anti-jamming technologies that allow to detect, mitigate, prevent and predict jamming efforts by 3rd party adversaries. This could be tackled through spectrum monitoring, geolocation and network management technologies working together with nulling or interference excision technologies as well as Anti-Jam waveform capabilities as Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum, Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum and beam forming technologies;
• Allows for network diversity, redundancy and geo-redundancy technologies to increase the resilience of the satellite network as well as for multi-access capabilities (hybrid LTE/5G/etc.) with intelligent routing;
• Can dynamically steer its radiation pattern accordingly to connect to another satellite in a different frequency and satellite orbit to increase network resiliency. Fixed, on-the-move and on-the-pause land-based and maritime terminals, man packs and antenna systems, including airborne terminals and antenna systems installed on rotatory wings (RW), need to be considered as well as different types of antenna technologies (e.g., parabolic, electronically steered, phased array, flat antennas, etc.). The secure connection and interface between antenna system and baseband needs to be taken into account as well;
• Includes network and ground segment technologies that improve the cyber hardening of all satellite vulnerable subsystems including protection against possible hacking, network intrusion, etc.
• Includes protection technologies against hostile action (e.g., jammers, intrusion and eavesdropping) for critical satellite datalinks, improving signals protection and integrity;
• Provides future proof interfaces and complementarity to upcoming disruptive security technologies such as quantum-safe encryption, self-healing networks, etc.;
• Is open towards upcoming and existing EU-based pooling and sharing programs (e.g., GovSatCom) and satellite constellations (EU Secure Space Connectivity System initiative currently under study) and ready to be integrated in these concepts.

Baseband equipment requirements (hubs, modems):

The right implementation of the terminal is likely to determine the success of the EPW. The flexibility and the affordability of the terminal are key considerations.

• A Software Defined Mode type of baseband equipment should be pursued;
• The baseband infrastructure (hubs and modems) should cover multiple architecture types of networks (point-to-point, point-to-multipoint, mesh) and satellite (wideband, spot beam, mix of both, transparent, processed) architectures;
• The EPW should operate on Software Defined hardware from different vendors to be selected by nations, government and defence agencies or institutions, depending on their preference or acquisition processes;
• The EPW should include the ability to receive and transmit various modulation methods using a common set of hardware;
• The EPW should be future-proof, easy to upgrade and change configurations (over-the-air) and offer the ability to alter functionality by downloading and running new software at will, in order to repurpose the modem for new applications;
• The EPW should be affordable and include the latest efficiency satellite waveform, networking and equipment technologies to save OPEX (reduce bandwidth costs, save resources for planning) and CAPEX (save on equipment cost) compared to existing expensive military satellite modems;
• The EPW should consider Size, Weight and Power (SWaP) constraints for on-the-pause and on-the-move platforms and unmanned systems. Modems and terminals should be easy to transport and deployed and use a minimum amount of power;
• The EPW should be deployable in different environment conditions and on different platforms (land, sea or air);
• The EPW should be available in different form factors (OEM cards, rack units or rugged terminals);
• The EPW should be transparent for national encryption standards and externally encrypted data, and capable of integrating on-board modules for encryption technology.

On-board Transponder requirements:

• The EPW should consider different transponder technologies including next generation ones (i.e., fully transparent transponder; processed transparent transponder; new generation processed interactive transponder).
• The EPW processed transponder should contribute to improve link performance; adoption of (individual) gain adjustment mechanism for dynamic power level control needs to be considered.
• The EPW interactive transponder should be able to support operation in GNSS-denied environments by implementing enhanced mechanisms dedicated to the network elements synchronisation and aided fast signal acquisition.
• The EPW interactive transponder should improve the Low Probability of Detection (LPD) and Low Probability of Interception (LPI) factors.
• The EPW interactive transponder must provide protection against intrusion and jamming.
• The EPW interactive transponder must deny connectivity for unauthorised transmission attempts by guaranteeing exclusive access to the satellite resource.
• The EPW interactive transponder should be able to implement enhanced mechanism, addressed in the EPW project, devoted to decoupling the transmission schemes between downlink and uplink signals in order to de-correlate uplink and downlink signals activity and prevent eavesdropping and activity monitoring for ongoing operations and assets.
• The EPW interactive transponder architecture should be designed maximising the employment of Software Defined solutions in order to perform future upgrade/changes of configuration.

Expected Impact:

The outcome should contribute to:

• Reduce dependencies on non-European suppliers by boosting the EDTIB and promoting the development of a European solution.
• The availability of a critical enabler for CSDP operations and missions in providing scalable secure and resilient communications in peacetime and during operations with protection against intrusion, hacking, jamming, traffic monitoring and eavesdropping;
• Full interoperability between different demanders and suppliers of satellite communication in support of military operations and missions;
• Secure, guaranteed and affordable access to satellite communications for all Member States and EDF Associated Countries;
• Strongly increase European autonomy in satellite communication for defence users and remove dependency on support from outside the EU for the transmission and exchange of mission critical and sensitive information;
• State-of-the-art technological solution in line with the latest satellite innovations and initiatives such as 5G, small LEO/MEO satellites, connected vehicles and Internet of things.