Viasat Inc., a global communications company, announced the availability of its Viasat Dynamic Video Encoding (DVE) capability, a new satellite communications technology enhancement that optimises sensor data for military aircraft on Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) missions. The new DVE capability allows aircraft to optimise their available bandwidth and video transmissions for high-speed, high-quality video feeds from the aircraft.
Optimise ISR data feeds
In ISR missions, military aircraft often travel long legs from base to objective, where satellite return link data rates can change depending upon the location of the aircraft within the satellite footprint.
As the aircraft traverse within a single beam and/or across higher data rate spot beam satellites, they are often unable to adjust sensor data rates to efficiently use the full satellite performance available.
Recognising this limitation, Viasat developed its DVE capability to optimise ISR data feeds based on satellite capability, as well as allowing this configuration-on-the-fly to occur across security boundaries.
Enhancements
Viasat's DVE application will provide:
- Video quality adaptation: encoder data rates dynamically change to fall within the maximum available return link data rates, enabling optimum use of available bandwidth—beam-edge-to-edge.
- Bandwidth optimisation: enables a communication channel between the Viasat modem and encoder, ensuring baseband applications get the full effect of the bandwidth required for ISR missions.
- Configuration across security boundaries: the application takes advantage of a third-party Cross Domain Solution (CDS) that enables configuration to update across security boundaries. Additionally, Viasat's DVE functionality can still be used to maximise the data rates, without a crypto requirement.
- Congestion management: enables communication between the Viasat modem and Quality of Service (QoS)-enabled router, informing the router when bandwidth changes, which is needed to help manage congested links for critical services during beam-to-beam transitions.
In-flight video quality
"The Viasat DVE capability is game-changing—it increases the utility of Beyond Line of Sight (BLOS) sensor data for ISR missions when aircraft travel across different satellites, different beams of the same satellite or through varying signal strengths in the same beam, enabling a more efficient use of the satellite bandwidth," said Ken Peterman, president, Government Systems, Viasat. "With Viasat DVE, we can enable military aircraft to maximise in-flight video quality and speeds as well as enable continuous video streaming, greater command and control (C2) and enhanced situational awareness to increase mission capability and success to the warfighter."