Amphinicy Technologies, a satellite software company from Zagreb, Croatia and Luxembourg, recently released a cloud-native distribution of Blink, an ultra-fast satellite modem for Earth observation and space science.
Blink is a software product for modern satellite ground stations. It is a real-time, high data rate, software-based satellite modem designed to run on standard servers. It moves digital signal processing from high-maintenance hardware to software. It can run on bare metal such as standard servers or laptops, as well as virtual and cloud environments.
Blink can bring previously impossible missions to life and make missions generally easier to manage, more productive and cheaper to set up and evolve.
Amphinicy has developed Blink Modem to enable anyone interested in Earth observation and space science to receive satellite payload data in real-time - reliably, efficiently and conveniently. Blink (Amazon Machine Image) AMI is a distribution of Blink Modem which allows operators to use their own orchestration systems. They can start and stop modem instances and other related infrastructure, minimizing cost and maximizing scalability.
Blink is a real-time, high data rate, software-based satellite modem designed to run on standard servers. It moves digital signal processing from high-maintenance hardware to software. It can run on bare-metal (e.g., a standard server or laptop) or virtual and cloud environments. Blink can bring previously impossible missions to life and make missions generally easier to manage, more productive and cheaper to set up and evolve.
“We have started developing the core of Blink seven years ago while we were working on a project for a client. Our main goal was to speed-up one small piece of the satellite data acquisition chain.“, says Tomislav Nakić-Alfirević, Solutions Manager at Amphinicy Technologies. “Today, Blink is a full-featured software-based modem. It fits perfectly in the new software-based ground station paradigm.”
Blink AMI is an ideal choice for satellite operators who prefer to integrate a software modem with their existing cloud orchestration systems to receive, process and store satellite data in a reliable, efficient, and convenient way. They can start using Blink in just a few clicks on the AWS console through the product listing.
Ground station services existed before, but nothing even close to an on-demand, pay-per-minute service such as that provided by a cloud-native ground station network with antennas all around the world.” says Tomislav Nakić-Alfirević, Solutions Architect at Amphinicy Technologies. “When AWS announced AWS Ground Station in 2018, we were already developing Blink, a wideband signal processing solution built in software, which fits perfectly in the new ground station paradigm.”
“With Blink, the need for custom hardware in Earth Observation (EO) payload acquisition is reduced to the bare minimum. A commercial-off-the-shelf RF digitizer/SDR and a server with Blink software is sufficient. The freedom in hardware upgrades and replacements and the overall evolution ease and speed of such a software-based system is incomparable to what the industry was used to by now.” said Irena Kos, Product Manager at Amphinicy Technologies.
Blink is all about high-performance computing: work on improving processing speed and scaling never stops. The engineering team has been busy making use of multiple graphics cards in the same server to process wideband signals and our working prototype now reaches over 2,7 Gb/s, up from the previous record of 1.2 Gb/s. The processed signal was a DVB-S2 32APSK signal with 9/10 coding, or in other words, the modem is now capable of processing channels over 700 MHz wide! This kind of capability is an absolute prerequisite for advanced, demanding EO missions to be able to use pure-software modems and in doing so, be able to enjoy all the benefits that come with that: unprecedented agility, lead times, cloud deployment, hardware vendor independence, advanced ground segment architectures, licensing flexibility, including per-minute billing and many, many more. As amazing as 2.7 Gb/s throughput is, it is a step along the way: stay tuned for updates over the next few months!
“We are dedicated to offer the best support to our clients. With Blink at AWS Marketplace, our solution will be available to even more engineers and communities. We are here to support them.” says Toni Jelavić, CEO at Amphinicy Technologies.
For more information on Blink Wideband Software Modem go to: http://blink.amphinicy.com.
