September 06, 2021

Kratos Defense x GateHouse SatCom

How the BGAN Network Emulator + Kratos’ Channel Simulator facilitate cost-efficient security testing

Thorough testing of a satellite communication system is essential to ensure that the communication system delivers a signal sufficient to sustain communication in all cases. Safety and security testing are very important, especially to clients working with sensitive information or important missions.

Traditionally, testing of satellite communication systems has been both expensive and time-consuming. Nevertheless, it is essential to have an extensive, test setup that represents real-life conditions closely to ensure safety and security.

GateHouse SatCom and Kratos Defense & Security Solutions, Inc. have an extensive collaboration which allows our clients to achieve commercial quality fast, efficiently, and with minimum costs when it comes to thorough testing of the satellite link with total control of the signal.

The aircraft is placed inside an RF shielded room (hangar) which allows our client to have complete control of the signal to test what happens to the satellite link when exposed to impairments such as signal degradation, latency, jamming etc.

Horn antennas transmit and receive signals inside the RF shielded room. A Kratos Channel Simulator simulates multiple, combined, and simultaneous distortions to the signals to and from the terminal in the aircraft and a BGAN Network Emulator from GateHouse emulates the BGAN core system in order to set up a connection.

The BGAN Network Emulator setup from Kratos and GateHouse brings the BGAN satellite network into a test bench, allowing our client to simulate a satellite connection for a BGAN, FBB or SBB terminal.

This results in the ability for our client to do end-to-end test of their connected aircraft under very difficult radio link conditions.

Impairments such as signal degradation, latency or jamming constitute a major problem, and it might be necessary to test the system’s robustness. The GateHouse BNE + Kratos Channel Simulator setup can be used preventively to emulate impairments to discover how much noise the signal can endure until it becomes insufficient for its purpose.

About the BGAN Network Emulator (BNE)

The BGAN Network Emulator is an off-the-shelf product, which has proven its worth throughout the course of development of several terminals in the market today. Everywhere where there is the need for satellite communication, you could benefit from a BNE test setup to perform a security check of terminals and applications using BGAN connectivity.

With the BNE, you can

Emulate all BGAN functionality in a controlled sandbox environment.
Validate user experience, e.g., during handover between beams.
Create, execute, reproduce, and document test scenarios.
Avoid exposure on the live network.
Test and document terminal performance.
End-to-end test exchange of user data such as e-mail, FTP, and web browsing.
Assure quality in any event (e.g., impairments such as signal degradation, latency, jamming, etc.)

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About the Kratos Channel Simulator

Kratos’ RF Channel Simulator is a powerful, yet economical, real time communications link simulator that enables testing RF environments in the lab. The Channel Simulator faithfully recreates RF effects in a physics-compliant and phase-continuous manner, ensuring the output precisely matches what would be experienced in the real world. The Channel Simulator offers wideband and narrowband capabilities.

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