As long ago as 2016 an article appeared in AFCEA’s Signal Magazine headed “Better Protection of Spectrum is a Defense Necessity.” This statement was reiterated at a convention in 2021, by a US Department of Defense (DoD) spokesperson, who stated: “Electromagnetic Spectrum Superiority Is Vital to Security.”
Since those statements were made, satellites have proliferated. As well as geostationary (GEO) satellites, there are now medium earth orbit satellites (MEOs) and thousands of low earth orbit satellites (LEOs) with those numbers increasing almost every day. This has created many thousands of new communication pathways; pathways that need to be optimized and managed, pathways that without adequate protection can be intercepted and jammed.
It’s hard to overestimate the importance of spectrum superiority. Vital of course, for national security and superiority in armed conflicts, where successful operations may depend on control of spectrum, making this a strategic imperative. But also, very important in the commercial world. Disruption of satellite signals or terrestrial networks, can paralyze emergency services, and navigation systems. A distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack can bring down an organization and cause millions of dollars of lost revenue. Interference to IoT devices controlling vehicles or machinery may result in loss of life, and disruption of GPS signals can cause havoc for drivers everywhere, to mention just a few examples.
Modern warfare takes place at multiple levels, involving many locations, on the ground, at sea and in the air, and numerous manned and unmanned devices. Satellite communications are needed for all of these and are the heart of national security and military operations, so it is of paramount importance that a country is able to secure and defend its communications. Spectrum superiority, i.e., the ability to control and secure spectrum, and being able to locate and disrupt the adversary’s communications, equates to strategic advantage for the military.
Spectrum superiority however, is not just a matter of preventing interference or jamming, it’s also about making optimum use of a scarce resource. It’s a finite resource that needs to be optimized between channels, orbits and users. Communications need to switch automatically and seamlessly to a different path, should one pathway become compromised, or simply suffer degradation due to movement or weather. A seamless, automatic switch-over to a LEO from a GEO for example, or from one user to another.
Whilst satellite is at the heart of defense communications, spectrum, includes everything from low frequency radio waves to extremely high frequency gamma rays, and the DoD operates devices in every one of these ranges. Fortunately, tools that can be used to optimize and defend satellite communications, can also be applied to other frequencies.
There are many ways that spectrum can be optimized and many ways that communications can be disrupted. Unfortunately, there is no one software tool or hardware device that will take care of all of these. Multiple tools are needed. This adds another issue to be contended with; that of complexity. If an incident occurs, a user is immediately thrust into crisis mode, and the last thing that is needed in that situation is complexity, but all too often that is exactly what a user is faced with. The requirement to use different software applications, that may be complicated, and not interface well with standard operating systems and procedures. The situation becomes even more complex, if the software tools come from different providers, aren’t intuitive and don’t interface well with other software being used, and/or the person dealing with the issue, is not familiar with the application.
All these factors combine to create major challenges, in particular for defense departments, where time is very much of the essence, and responses need to be instantaneous, but also for governments and enterprises.
Essentially, there are three facets to spectrum superiority:
Making optimum use of a scare resource, enabling faster, more secure and more efficient data transmission.
Securing spectrum to minimize opportunities for any disruptions including jamming, spoofing and interference, whether intentional or unintentional, from sunspots, rainfade or 5G towers for example.
Expediently recognizing and rectifying adverse events should they occur.
Spectrum Optimization
This starts with network design: link budgets and trade-off calculations. Any system used for this needs to encompass multi-orbits, include an easy and efficient application program interface (API) and (where applicable) interconnect to the DoD system.
The second part of spectrum optimization is capacity management: ensuring that the most efficient use is made of the available spectrum at any point in time. A dynamic management and control system is needed to manage and address the complex challenges of sharing resources between multiple user types, service agreements and orbits (LEO, MEO, HEO and GEO). This includes monitoring and optimizing both Mbps and MHz and managing COMSATCOM and MILSATCOM assets.
Large networks with thousands of VSATs need a simple and automatic method to commission terminals. This system needs to incorporate link budget optimization, the facility to work with various antenna types, and interface with TRANSEC and COMSEC encrypted links.
Spectrum Security
Once a network is up and running, it needs systems in place to constantly monitor the signals for anomalies and any sign of service degradation, interference or failure. These systems must be able to monitor hundreds of carriers per second and trigger immediate operator alerts, should any anomalies occur. In addition, the automatic network monitoring needs to ensure that Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are adhered to.
A beneficial enhancement to this would be to add a software tool to find carrier under carrier interference, and record and replay events to aid in developing interference identification and mitigation strategies.
Dealing with adverse Events
In spite of the best protection and security systems, adverse events will happen. Without interference management tools already in place, these can easily bring down a network, as specialized personnel intervene and develop counter measures. Of critical importance to defense operations, tools are available to both pinpoint the source of any interference and automatically cancel it when it happens.
One Step Further
During conflicts, defense operations not only need to secure and encrypt their own communications, they need to locate and jam enemy communications. Software is needed to facilitate reversible active countermeasures, jamming signals of interest according a defined operational plan, degrading or denying communications to the adversary. Integrating machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) at this stage, can elevate this process, by predicting events before they begin to happen.
The Solution
As mentioned above, optimizing and securing spectrum is a complex process, involving many different tools. For an operator, the more these tools seamlessly interface with each other, the smoother their communications networks will run. Equally important is that the software suites used provide intuitive graphical user interfaces (GUI), so that the operator doesn’t require a degree in computer science to run the network. This is particularly important for tools used to deal with anomalies.
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