Digital Ship March 2016 page 14

SATCOMS

Panasonic has announced that it has agreed a deal with Kymeta for its flat panel antenna technology, to bring a newrange of satcom products to the maritime market. Will small, lightweight flat antennas for a few hundred dollars be

the catalyst to drive broadband VSAT adoption in shipping? Digital Ship spoke to Håkan Olsson, Kymeta

Flat panel maritime satellite antennas draw closer

PP anasonic Avionics Corporation andKymeta Corporation haveannounced a new agreement to

work together to bring flat panel antennatechnology for VSAT communications tomaritime markets, under which Panasonicwill order “a significant volume” ofKymeta's flat panel antennas and useKymeta mTenna technology to manufac-ture and distribute maritime terminals forvessels around the world.

The antennas are scheduled to gothrough prototype testing this year andshould be commercially available in 2017,the latest in a series of significant steps for-ward that have been made in the last 12months on the path towards a practicaland functional flat panel antenna for thecommercial maritime market.

Kymeta says that its technology is muchlighter than traditional maritime satcomantennas, and doesn’t use mechanical com-ponents – instead it relies on electronicallysteered, lightweight, flat panel antennasthat can acquire and track a satellite from amoving platform, potentially opening upthe opportunity for cheaper systems thatrequire less maintenance and can be car-ried on board a ship for installation.

Panasonic is looking to combine thistechnology with its own high-throughputsatellite network to offer new services andterminals to the maritime market, asHåkan Olsson, vice president of maritimeat Kymeta, explained in an interview withDigital Ship.

“Panasonic is the world’s largest serviceprovider for aero, but they are also aggres-sively pursuing maritime. They acquiredITC last year, and that’s just one of manythings they are doing,” he told us.

“They have committed to buy a signifi-cant amount of our smart antennas to pur-sue the commercial maritime and supery-acht industries. Panasonic is buying thesesmart antennas from us, and then they willdecide whether they are going to developthese terminals themselves or work togeth-er with someone like Intellian to develop aterminal on their behalf. It’s all intendedfor maritime vessels.”

“I’ve spent some time with Panasonicover the last few months and I must say I’mextremely impressed with what they areintending to do in terms of building the net-work out, with very high throughput servic-es, hundreds of megabits to the ship versusa few megabits as is more common today.”

Kymeta’s roll out of its technology into

maritime is one part of a global marketstrategy that will see the company targetall sorts of moving vehicles, includingfuture connected cars. This was evidencedby a recently announced deal with Toyotathat will see the technology incorporatedinto the construction of the automobilemanufacturer’s vehicles to enable connec-tivity via satellite.

As such, it is aiming to move towards agoal of mass production of these flat panelantennas that will significantly reducetheir cost per unit, down to just a few hun-dred dollars in the case of a flat antenna fora car – something which will likely havesignificant knock-on effects for the mar-itime satellite antenna market.

It has already begun to move in thisdirection, having reached an agreementwith SHARP to use the Japanese compa-ny’s LCD TV manufacturing equipment tobuild antennas on a more industrial scale.

“At Kymeta, our core competency iswhat we call the ‘smart antenna’ that elec-tronically steers without any moving partsand can acquire and maintain a connectionwith a satellite. The ground-breaking newsfrom last year was that we have figuredout a way to use existing TV display man-ufacturing lines to essentially ‘print’ ourantennas,” Mr Olsson said.

“That is what SHARP has done for us,on our first prototypes, and we receivedthose panels in October (2015). As ofDecember (2015) we have a fully assem-bled antenna using this glass-on-glass TFT(Thin Film Transistor). Essentially it justlooks like an LCD TV screen that youwould have in your living room.”

“There are a number of reasons whythat’s significant, for one it gives us a pathto high volume, low cost production forapplications like the connected car in thefuture, for example, where we’re talkingabout tens of millions of cars that will beable to have a connection with a satellite.Also related to that is that, out of the gatewe get to take advantage of the $260 billionthat has been invested in that kind of man-ufacturing technology to make it consis-tently high quality as it comes off the line.”

The goal is to begin introducing thistechnology initially in traditional satcommarkets, including commercial maritime,before expanding into areas commonlythought to be unsuitable for VSAT satellitecommunication.

“What you will see here is a kind ofrolling calendar where we will go to mar-

ket in markets that use satellite communi-cations today, where we can enhance thosemarkets with a better performing, morereliable solution, that’s at the same price orlower cost than what they’re payingtoday,” said Mr Olsson.

“But then longer term you will see solu-tions in areas like leisure vessels, or con-nected cars where the manufacturers buildit into the car. To get there you need to getto a price point never heard of in the satel-lite industry, of something like a few hun-dred dollars.”

Maritime partnershipsAs it moves towards the introduction of itsprototype antenna for the maritime market,Kymeta has already been busy in agreeingpartnerships with various stakeholders thatcan facilitate its entry into the sector.

On top of this new deal with Panasonicand the company’s previously discussedmanufacturing arrangement with SHARP,companies like Intelsat and Intellian areworking with the antenna designer to pre-pare a product for market.

Intelsat has backed development of aKu-band antenna to the tune of $25 millionin return for exclusivity in operation of themaritime terminal in that band on its satel-lite network, while Intellian will integratethe flat panel systems with some of itstechnology, including a basic rotating andtilting platform to improve look angles.

“This all relates to the maritime imple-mentation. First of all, just over a year agowe signed an agreement with Intelsat wherethey enabled us to expedite our develop-ment to come up with a Ku-band antennasooner rather than later. What we see heretoday, the maritime antenna that we startedtesting in January with Intelsat, is a directresult from that,” Mr Olsson explained.

“Intellian comes in from the perspectivethat we will focus on our core competen-cies, to develop and manufacture a smartantenna that can automatically acquiresatellites on moving objects, but that needsto be complemented with a proven mar-itime implementation – that’s whereIntellian comes in. They will do the mar-itime casing, they have their proprietaryLNBs and BUCs, and below deck equip-ment which they have developed with ourtechnology inside.”

“You don’t need a stabilised platformwith these antennas as it electronically steersthrough software to the satellite. The anten-na will be able to steer the signal fast enough

to compensate for the motion of the vessel aswell as any movement of the satellites.”

Traditional mechanically steeredradome stabilised antennas can see a satel-lite pretty much anywhere in the world,however the inherent characteristics of aflat panel mean that it can only scan so faroff the broad side until it loses the signal.

The solution is to either use multipleantennas, which will be more costly, or touse a pointing mechanism of some kind tocompensate – though this would be signifi-cantly less complex than a stabilised plat-form as the flat panel does not need to havethe same level of pointing accuracy requiredwith a traditional antenna, it just has to facein the general direction of the satellite.

“Our panel is going to scan more than60 degrees off the broad side and still con-nect to the satellite, what that means is thatif you have a vessel that is reasonably closeto the equator, maybe from France down tomid-Africa, then you would be fine withjust one panel looking straight up as it canscan to see the satellite in any direction,”said Mr Olsson.

“But if you’re travelling truly world-wide, which most commercial vessels doand a lot of superyachts, then you needeither multiple panels, maybe four ormore, that will be mounted in differentdirections to get a full 360 degree view ofthe horizon, or, as we’ve been talking toIntellian and Panasonic about, have onepanel that normally looks straight up, butcan mechanically adjust if you’re in theNorth Sea or somewhere to have a betterlook angle towards the satellite.”

“That doesn’t involve very fine mechan-ics, just to adjust the angle of the antennato allow the smart antenna to do the beamsteering from there.”

The maritime unit that the company isworking on is approximately 80cm indiameter, with the aperture itself measur-ing 70cm. The antenna itself is about 8cmthick, but Intellian will add a BUC andLNB to the unit so that will change theform factor slightly.

“You can count on it being less than20cm, or maybe 15cm, for a unit that hasthese included as well as the maritime-approved casing around it,” said Mr Olsson.

“You’re going to be able to buy one ofthese and hand-carry it on board, self-installit, turn the power on and be up and runningwith an internet connection. So we’re work-ing with Intelsat, Panasonic and modemmanufacturers to do auto-acquisition andself-provisioning on the satellite network,so you don’t need engineers on board tomake the connection happen.”

“This is all to be able to get to the biggercommercial maritime market with a unitthat is affordable to buy but, more impor-tantly, that you can very easily installinstead of having cranes lifting antennason board and needing engineers on boardwho need to spend hours to optimise thepolarisation and everything else.”

The technology used in the flat panelThe glass-on-glass thin film transistor technology is thinner than an iPhone and can be produced in large volumes on LCD TV production lines

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Digital Ship March 2016 page 16

SATCOMS

antenna is not frequency specific, in thesense that it can be adapted to work withdifferent frequencies, though Kymetanotes that initial implementation in themaritime market will focus on Ku-band.

“Our technology works for any fre-quency band, what we’ve announced withPanasonic is specific to Ku-band, but we’reactually developing a Ka-band panel inparallel. They’re a few months behind theKu-band development, but we will seeprototypes this year in Ka-band as well,”said Mr Olsson.

“But for maritime, Ku-band is what ismost relevant for customers today. We have

an agreement with Inmarsat where we’redeveloping Ka-band for aero, so that’s oneexample of what we’re doing on that end.”

“The core technology, the difference(between aero and maritime) is not that bigthere but what is different is what you dowith it in terms of terminal implementa-tion. To approve a terminal for maritime,that is very different to what you need todo for aero when it comes to temperaturechanges, vibration and shock, and every-thing else. There’s also the certificationpart, for a smart antenna terminal for aero,you’re talking about years to get it throughall the FCC and other certifications, thingsyou don’t have to do to the same level inmaritime. So the core technology is prettymuch the same, but the way it’s applied isvery different.”

Future deploymentAs Kymeta’s technology makes its way onboard commercial ships, Mr Olsson saysthat he expects initial implementations tobegin with flat panels on movable plat-forms in most cases, though he hopes thatthe not-too-distant future will see the eco-nomics align to make multiple flat panelantenna deployments a viable option.

“I think initially the lowest cost solutionwill likely be the one panel that is on amechanical platform that adjusts, it won’tbe a stabilised platform per se becausethose are expensive and require a lot ofmaintenance but a platform with a rotatingand tilting function,” he told us.

“However, I think it’s going to vary bycustomer, we’ve been in discussions with

several commercial customers directly,both in commercial shipping and in oil andgas, and their preference already todaywould be to pay extra for multiple panelsjust to get rid of any moving parts, becausethey have so many issues with antennastoday with reliability of service.”

“The good thing here is that our smartantennas can be deployed in any of thoseconfigurations, so it’s up to the customer,both the end customer and people likePanasonic and Intellian to decide whatthey want to do with it.”

One benefit that Kymeta hopes to beable to offer to users of multiple flat panelantennas on a single vessel will be a ‘com-bined antenna’ effect, something the com-pany has already demonstrated with aworking prototype, which would allow theseparate antennas to connect to one anoth-er and effectively act like one larger unit.

“What that means is that if you havemultiple panels you can combine the out-put from those panels for increased gainand performance. So for every doubling ofthe panels you’re getting a 2.7dB gain. Ifyou have four you get a 5.4dB gain, and ifyou have eight you double that again,”said Mr Olsson.

“That’s really appealing for cruise shipsor large commercial vessels that want real-ly high throughput for a low service cost,because you can get to really high levels ofantenna performance by combining theseapertures efficiently. That’s another majorbreakthrough that we discovered over thelast few months.”

“Though with that said you can still get

away with just one antenna, it’s the sim-plest implementation to do that andmechanically adjust it to have a good lookangle to the satellite. From there, as yourneeds grow and you want more efficient,higher throughput then you can go to mul-tiple antennas.”

Before moving to the multiple antennainstallation stage however, the journeymust start with the initial step of gettinga first maritime antenna out to sea andthoroughly proven in everyday usagebefore it can become a series option forvessel operators.

If that is achieved, then Kymetabelieves it can be pretty bullish about thepotential market for the technology by theend of the decade.

“We have proven our technology in labsand on cars, but we have yet to show that itactually works on a boat. I don’t see any rea-son why it wouldn’t work on a boat, but wewant to be transparent and honest and saywe haven’t tried it yet. That’s what we’regoing to do in March,” said Mr Olsson.

“Assuming it works as expected I thinkthis is going to be like back to the 90’s,when people used to have big CRT TVs intheir living rooms – today you don’t seemany of them, it’s all flat screens. I thinkyou’re going to see a similar transition, notonly for maritime but for aero and anymechanically steered antenna.”

“Assuming that our technology and ter-minal implementations are going to be suc-cessful and are proven successful – I don’tsee any reason why anyone would buy amechanically steered antenna in 2020.”

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In the future, Kymeta envisages flat antennasbeing built into the ship’s structure,

eliminating the need for antenna radomes

DS

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