It’s not often in a technology business that billions in investment and revenue depend on one of the humblest components of the tech system. But that’s certainly the case for the existing MEO and fast-emerging LEO markets. Those billions have gone into building spacecraft and launching them, gaining regulatory approvals and landing rights, and developing the complex systems to manage orbital paths and device handoffs. With those items under control, the entire business proposition has come to rest on the development of a low-cost, high-performance antenna able to acquire and hand off multiple satellites passing overhead.
That’s where the new crop of flat-panel antenna (FPA) innovators comes in. In a recent report, New Antennas, New Opportunities, the World Teleport Association looked at these companies and their products, the markets where they are likely to find their first success, and their potential impact on the ground segment operations of teleports. The following are the key takeaways from that report.
Conquering Cost
Arguably the biggest challenge for FPA developers is bringing their costs to within a competitive range of parabolic antennas. The price differential today is measured in orders of magnitude, with parabolic antennas available at prices that are acceptable to consumers of relatively modest means. Volume production, innovation in integrated circuit technology and the ability to piggyback on related manufacturing lines are the keys to driving down the cost of FPAs. Those, in turn, rest on the engineering innovations that FPA developers are commercializing, each of which represents a bet on a different path to success.
Improving Performance
In terms of performance, today’s FPAs stack up poorly against parabolic antennas, especially for communications between GEO satellites and fixed points on the ground. FPA developers also have significant power consumption issues to resolve, owing to the fact that electronically steered antennas are made up of thousands of power-hungry radiating elements. Again, it’s all about the engineering and the painstaking work of making it better with each generation of the product.
Finding Buyers
FPAs are making their first impact in mobility markets, primarily in the military and in commercial aviation. Due to pricing issues, adoption has been strongest in comms-on-the-move military applications, which are less price-sensitive than commercial ones, and the form factor for FPAs explains their early success in aviation. Opinions differ widely on when and how deeply FPAs will penetrate other, related markets, such as ground mobility, maritime and enterprise. Almost all the respondents agreed that FPAs are not a threat to replace dish antennas entirely. In particular, large, fixed dishes will remain part of the satellite landscape for the foreseeable future. These, of course, are core to the business of teleport operators.
A Life Beyond MEO and LEO
The success of LEO satellite constellations – and to a lesser extent, MEO constellations – and FPA technology are closely intertwined. Most of the experts we contacted felt that the LEO constellations are absolutely dependent on the ability of companies to introduce functional FPAs to the marketplace at affordable prices. The reverse is not quite true, however. While conceding that an absence of LEO and MEO constellations would significantly limit demand for FPAs, many interviewees nonetheless see a niche for this technology in a GEO-only world.
Waiting and Seeing
The satellite and teleport operators who contributed to the report appear by and large to be taking a wait-and-see approach to the emergence of FPAs. Most interviewees said they view the LEO and MEO markets as the key to generating sufficient demand for FPAs to drive costs down significantly. For fixed GEO applications, they do not anticipate FPAs replacing parabolic antennas in the foreseeable future. “If FPAs were magically the same price and performance as parabolics, we would convert entirely to the use of FPAs for every fixed GEO application,” said one respondent with a company that operates satellites.
One interviewee said HTS satellites in GEO could expand the utility of FPA antennas by virtue of their own high power and flexible beam steering capabilities. In effect, some of the requirements that otherwise would be levied on the antenna are handled by the satellites, this interviewee said.
That said, it is nearly impossible for anyone to predict when FPAs, given their current limitations and challenges, might begin making inroads into mobility applications beyond aviation, according to this interviewee. “That’s the $1 million question,” the interviewee said.
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Robert Bell is Executive Director of the World Teleport Association, which represents the world’s most innovative teleport operators, carriers and technology providers in 46 nations. He can be reached at rbell@worldteleport.org
"New Antennas, New Opportunities" is available for free to members and for sale to non-members at https://www.worldteleport.org/store/ViewProduct.aspx?id=16584423
