An area of great concern within SATCOM and MILSATCOM market segments is the constant concern over satellite interference. Innovation is called for in order to negate such problematic challenges for, when encountered, interference impedes crucial communications. Many firms have initiated development of product to offset interference — and one such firm is Glowlink, based in Los Altos, California.
Jeff Chu, Glowlink's
CEO and Founder.
Headed up by founder Jeff Chu, the company provides a variety of system solutions as well as geolocation support that assists users in determining exactly where an interference emitter is located. These services encompass initiating studies to determine the best interference mitigation technique and technology, to an exacting analysis of signal environment to running geolocation as a complete service.
The company’s innovative technology is their advanced and patented CSIR™ (Communications Signal Interference Removal) — this technology separates interference from a communications signal before the former ever reaches the receiver — plus, the company licenses the CSIR™ core technology.
According to Jeff, innovation is Glowlink’s key to staying ahead of the constantly evolving interference problem.
He said, “For example, as 5G spreads worldwide, spectrum sharing between the telecom giants and satellite operators is predictably creating interference. Compounding the problem is the bring-up of the meshed LEO satellite-side networks, which will undoubtedly cause the same type of interference for satellite ground stations. Even with planning perfect to the 99 percent, we will need to innovate to solve the 1 percent problem — in our industry, we’ve learned that 1 percent is the difference between mission success and mission failure.
“In the realm of intentional interference, we face ever-changing adversaries. The interference techniques used by our adversaries tomorrow include those of yesterday and whatever schemes they think of today. To stay ahead, we anticipate their developments and iterate on our effective techniques while exploring new algorithmic approaches.”
As far as innovative projects that the company has underway, Jeff said, “We are rolling out products and technologies aimed directly at the growing 5G/LTE terrestrial interference problem mentioned above, as well as expanding our GS380 line of mature, high performance interference mitigation products, such as the GS380X, to include things like a wide-band version that is capable of protecting an entire transponder’s bandwidth while also delivering next-generation interference mitigation capabilities. We’re already getting positive feedback from our users in the field and are looking forward to full-scale deployment of these capabilities. This is an exciting time for the company.”
The Interference Removal System (GS380X) referred to by Jeff directly addresses noise and interference in a digitally-modulated communications carrier using Glowlink’s streaming technology.
Armed with only the most basic information about the primary carrier (center frequency, bandwidth), the GS380X removes — at the digital signal processing level — the signal portion that is not a part of the carrier.
Inserted just prior to the receiver, the GS380X effectively removes all interference, regardless of the type of interference (hopping, burst, modulated, unmodulated, and so on), from the carrier, and restores the carrier to a pristine state that can easily be demodulated despite the ongoing presence of persistent, changing and overwhelming interference on the same frequency.
GS380X benefits include the ability to remove interference that changes in strength and characteristics over time, requires no information about the interference to be removed, initiates real-time streaming removal, is plug-and-play with existing comms infrastructure and no changes are required, and offers single chassis construction for ease of transport, maintenance and logistical support.
When asked about the innovative technologies that will drive the space and satellite industry in the next year or so, he said, “As cheesy of an answer as this may be, I believe that the bring-up of LEOs will, for better or worse, drive innovation. Of course, we’ll always have the problem of growing bandwidth demands, but LEOs introduce a paradigm shift in the types of problems that we’ll have to engineer around. I’ll let others debate whether LEO will be a market success or failure — for me, it carries significance in that it puts a high-wattage spotlight on a whole host of problems central to satellite communications, at any orbit. These are problems that I’m excited to solve with the rest of our community and, particularly, our engineers at Glowlink.”
Other areas of Glowlink participation include the analysis of a firm’s network management requirements in order to recommend solutions to manage SATCOM operations through overall system acquisition and the reduction of operation and maintenance
Additional areas of operation for Glowlink include a variety of maintenance plans, operations and maintenance support, consulting services and demonstrations, comprehensive training courses, system installation and more. The company's website is located at www.glowlink.com.
Satellite Innovation will be presenting a "Briefing — Interference" at 4:15 p.m. on October 9 in Silicon Valley, California, and Mr. Jeffrey Chu, the CEO and Founder of Glowlink, will be one of the speakers for this important session. Interference has always plagued the satellite industry. Questions that will be asked, and answered, include: How can we resolve a congested sky? With evermore satellites being launched and more terminals coming to market, interference is threatening the industry. Proper training and machine learning may be the best solutions. What network management solutions are there for interference problems? How will the new smallsat world with thousands of satellites competing for precious spectrum handle the demands of many? To learn more about the super event, please head over to satinnovation.com for details and registration.
