The Road to
Interoperability

Making Gateways More Resilient

3/24/2026

Recently an SES gateway in Israel was hit by a missile, targeted as part of the war in Iran. According to Space News, SES said “a small portion of the geostationary antenna field was damaged, adding that no injuries were reported and the impact did not affect the main facility at Emek Ha’ela.”

While I’m not privy to global intelligence on these things, this is the first time I can remember hearing about a commercial ground station being targeted physically, especially by missiles.

In fact, it turns the standard attack narrative on its head just a bit. Usually, we think about the ground segment being targeted by cyber and jamming threats, while missiles have been more of a growing concern as kinetic attacks on satellites in the space segment.

Either way, one point is clear: threats against satellite connectivity are growing as our reliance on those satellites deepens. Which is why both defense and commercial organizations are increasingly concerned about the resiliency of these networks.

That’s one reason why the defense sector has been so active in standards efforts including DIFI. In a nutshell: standards-based distributed, virtualized and cloud-enabled systems are more adaptable and reactive to disasters than hardware. It was one of the key motivations behind the Internet, to create a survivable global network even if large parts of the network were to fail.

How does DIFI come into play? By digitizing analog signals at or close to the antenna, data and communications can quickly be transferred for processing anywhere. Instead of being chained to a vulnerable, damaged or destroyed local gateway, processing is shifted to any devices that can handle data conforming to the DIFI standard. In addition, signals can be shifted to antennas at other gateways that are able to connect with the satellite in play, all contributing to far higher levels of operational resilience.

In addition, operations can be reconstituted faster since DIFI-based elements can be obtained more quickly from multiple vendors. That’s true for hardware components, and even more rapidly for virtualized software elements that can be downloaded instead of being shipped and installed.

5G NTN will add another layer of resiliency when it comes into widespread use, potentially allowing operations to roll over beyond antennas and gateways as well as between satellites and even networks.

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Supporting Space Domain Awareness through AI Enablement

2/24/2026

It’s been tremendously exciting to see how rapidly the DIFI standard has become so widely adopted for ground segment operations across earth observation (EO), remote sensing (RS) and TT&C applications. Its presence in satcom, milsatcom and mission download networks continues to expand and has become foundational across Ground-as-a-Service (GaaS) implementations.

Now we’re seeing expansion in another critical mission set, RF analysis and SDA applications, where DIFI is contributing to the creation of AI and machine learning (ML) capabilities.

Using DIFI, raw signals can be fed directly into private or public clouds very near the point of signal capture where they can be used to train AI and machine language analysis for signals intelligence. This is particularly cost effective for use with public cloud infrastructure that has global reach. Public clouds typically mainly charge for compute and egress of data, less so for ingress fees or the networking of the process results.

It’s broadly acknowledged that training is the greatest hurdle to effective AI adoption. Using a common data standard to ingest the data brings scale benefits to AI training and performing that training in the cloud while limiting data egress brings economic scale.

Once created, these AI/ML algorithms can then be deployed at scale across an entire set of deployed sensors in local public and private clouds. Relevant results and conclusions can then be output to local and centralized operations teams, taking full economic advantage of the cloud network. As satcom continues to expand its reach with NGSO constellations and very High Throughput Satellite (vHTS) architectures, signal monitoring at scale will be a necessity for both quality of service assurance and SDA applications.

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Well-Crafted Standards Enhance Flexibility. The gNodeB in 5G NTN is a Case in Point

1/27/2026

More than a little talk… and deep thinking… is ongoing about 5G NTN, especially where direct-to-device comes into play. Operators are working out their strategies, including the pack leaders who are defining the network architectures that will match their still-developing business plans.

Eutelsat, for example, just announced it is buying 340 additional satellites for its OneWeb LEO constellation. It’s well known that Eutelsat and the IRIS2 program plan to support 5G with these and future satellites. And while a major announcement last week from Blue Origin about its TeraWave constellation didn’t specifically mention 5G, it’s not a stretch to assume it’s at least a factor in their calculations.

One of the biggest questions in 5G NTN architectures for space is where to put the gNodeB. The gNodeB (Next Generation Node B) is the cornerstone radio base station that provides New Radio (NR) connectivity to user devices. In a terrestrial network it lives on the ground (of course), usually at the cell tower.

But what happens in a space network? Now you have two choices: on the ground or in space on the satellite. There are good arguments on both sides depending upon your satellite architecture, orbit, services and more. And depending upon your service areas, partners and customers, you might want a combination of both. The way LEO satellites interact with ground systems, for example, is fundamentally different from GEO.

So, you have to give the 3GPP folks due credit for designing a flexible standard that would support both industry-level interoperability and network-level flexibility.

Take a look at Starlink, for example, which just spent $17 billion to buy spectrum from Echostar. That spectrum that has no value without 5G NTN because it is intended to support unmodified phones.

Starlink’s core service, according to research firm Analysys Mason in a recent white paper, “does not adhere to interoperable networking standards.” According to the report’s authors, the constellation does use a modified form of the 4G core network protocol that achieves certain features, however “these have been adapted slightly for their needs and integrated with in-house software for an overall proprietary solution.”

Starlink will have to move to standard 5G NTN at least for its direct-to-device satellites that will connect to existing LTE-capable devices, using terrestrial spectrum from telco partners such as T-Mobile. The good news is that the 5G NTN standard is specifically designed to ensure interoperability between vendor systems and satellite operator networks. All that’s lagging is the technology implementation of the 5G NTN systems. That’s no small thing, of course, but it is catching up, and operators will have the flexibility to architect networks that will support and evolve with their respective missions, including how they choose to design and manage a cell tower in space.

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A Tale of 3 Standards: VITA 49, eCPRI and the Path to 5G NTN

12/2/2025

One of the first decisions that had to be made in defining an interoperability standard for ground equipment was what to use as a base, VITA 49 or eCPRI? Both are standards for the interface between RF equipment and RF signal processing, and each is favored by one of the two major markets for satellite connectivity.

In this corner: evolved Common Public Radio Interface (eCPRI) is the enhanced version of CPRI which is commonly used in telecom networks supporting LTE, evolved to support 5G requirements. Opposite is VITA 49, which is commonly used in and preferred by defense and government RF based systems. Defense is the single biggest market by far for satellite connectivity and 5G NTN is the next frontier in commercial markets, including consumer direct-to-device (D2D).

The decision on which to base the DIFI standard wasn’t as simple as today vs. tomorrow, however. Defense ministries around the world are the largest customers for commercial satcom, and they, too, are exploring applications for D2D. After examining the arguments on both sides, VITA vs. eCPRI, DIFI planners found that VITA 49 was the clear choice for several reasons.

As a result, it was easy to define a simple locked down version of VITA 49 of just ten pages that supported the basic Digital IF needs of the satellite industry. That simplicity and ease of implementation helped enable broad adoption.

The kicker, however, is that VITA 49 actually sacrifices nothing when it comes to supporting satellite’s ability to capitalize on 5G.

Here’s why: When you compare the network architectures of traditional satcom and milsatcom systems against 5G NTN terrestrial architectures, while the equipment in the processing chain must interoperate at the digital IF level, the networks themselves integrate at the IP level. As a result, it makes no difference if the satcom network uses DIFI while the terrestrial network uses eCPRI.

Isn’t it nice when standards actually work together?

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WGS + DIFI + AI = More Than Alphabet Soup

11/4/2025

Several great presentations during DIFI Consortium Day at IEEE’s MILCOM 2025 event in Los Angeles. Of special interest, to me at least, was the keynote delivered by A.J. Vigil of Systems Technology, Inc. (Systek) on The Digital Transformation of Satcom, focused particularly on the U.S. government’s Wideband Global Satcom System (WGS), the backbone of the U.S. military’s wideband satellite communications capability.

Dr. Vigil, who has been working with WGS for many years and is an active contributor to a variety of satcom standards, is leading efforts to incorporate digital IF into the WGS ground segment and into defense networks broadly. He reported extremely encouraging news, including results from a demo this summer and a test exercise this fall.

“At PdM WESS we put together a demonstration across three sites,” he said. (See related story here.) In the middle, “We pulled the plug on the antenna at one site and the link failed over to the antenna at the remote site without skipping a beat. We demonstrated some things for the first time to our audience: full-digital IF signal chains, including a virtual digital IF modem, and digital IF combiner/divider through digital IF conversion (IFC), using multiple carriers, two different vendors, and transport over the Army’s Global Agile Integrated Transport Network (GAIT).”

The upshot? “For key U.S. DoW stakeholders, seeing is believing,” he said. “There’s nothing like pulling a guy’s antenna and maintaining the [satellite] link. DIFI was awesome.”

According to Dr. Vigil, “Digital IF equipment from two vendors was evaluated and found to be generally WGS Terminal Cert ready for the applications tested.”

There is a DIFI Working Group focused on the mapping between existing L-Band (analog) WGS requirements and digital IF domain tests that make sense for digital IF modems and terminals. The group plans to engage with SpaceCom Delta 8 Satcom Engineering, the group that writes U.S. DoW Satcom MIL Standards and WGS requirements documents, on an ongoing basis to align on DIFI Standard compliant digital IF modem and terminal testing for WGS.

And there was much more going on in a very productive day for advancing digital IF acceptance. For example, use of AI/ML in consuming DIFI Standard data and characterizing insights for users, including AWS showing constellation identification using an AI agent that was trained on Rhode & Schwartz documentation. I have a feeling we’ll be seeing more AI projects in the near future.

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Exploring AI? First Consider Your Ground Architecture

10/7/2025

We can’t escape AI conversations these days, can we? AI may not be everywhere yet, but talk about it is—in magazines, blogs and product roadmaps in every industry. Opportunities for AI value abound in satellite networks, across both space and ground segments. And while AI is raising more questions than answers so far, a few broad technology strokes are becoming clear, especially in the ground network.

One bit of clarity is that to support AI in network operations, software environments beat hardware. For another, interoperability will be key.

Space networking use cases are as diverse as predictive maintenance, improved reliability and automating operations for profit-based management.

And for security. For example, employing AI to actively repel and defend by looking for and quickly reacting to anomalous traffic into and out of the ground M&C. Which highlights the first of those broad stroke conclusions. Virtualized, orchestrated elements enable more organic and dynamic processes such as on-the-fly updates and fixes, which is not only critical for cyber security but is especially needed for automating operations.

One reason (among many) why terrestrial network operators are ahead of satellite operators when it comes to their AI plans is that most have already moved far down the software-defined and cloud-enabled paths.

The second broad conclusion, the need for interoperability, is even more important and fits hand in glove with virtualization. Here’s why.

It’s common knowledge that AI is only as good as its training data. For network operations that means capturing the correct data from disparate elements and systems, all with the right labeling and correlations, and in consistent formats for teaching the AI what you want it to learn.

Purpose-built hardware is usually proprietary, reporting a fixed set of information in a fixed format. Other systems may be able to massage and harmonize that data but can only do so much and only after the fact. With virtualized functions, on the other hand, all information can be exposed as required and evolve over time into formats that are more easily digestible for the AI. In many ways standards are all about supply chain compatibility.

For example, suppose you wanted to train your AI to automatically meet unique network throughput needs while optimizing overall power consumption. Say you have three gateways, each differentiated for diverse environmental factors, and all with differing levels of capability and costs. In addition to external data such as weather, you’ll need a wide variety of component, system, network and business information, including very specific and accurate power consumption data and current configuration for each application. Acquiring this data from some hardware may not even be possible, and without rigorous standards compliance would be extremely difficult to correlate. In a standards-based software environment, however, while it may require a resource commitment, it is not technically challenging to build and scale a software or cloud environment in ways that allow access and extraction of any necessary information in consistent, AI-friendly formats.

What’s more, the technology challenge of growing and future-proofing systems is commonplace and perpetual. And AI isn’t the only fundamental tech change we are facing today. While we in the satellite industry are just now getting to understand, plan for and implement 5G NTN, the terrestrial network world is already beginning to define 6G.

According to a recent white paper written by research firm Analysys-Mason, “6G will be an AI-native technology… As optical inter-satellite links become commonplace in low-earth orbit, orchestration platforms must be ready to compute optimal network configurations and traffic routes in a considerably more complicated system. As the size of the interconnected network grows, the number of possible configurations increases exponentially, and machine learning (ML) tools will be required to compute viable configurations in real time.”

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