DIFI’S PlugFest 2024 Europe & Showcase a Success
2024年7月30日 - 11:53PM
UK Satellite Applications Catapult’s Harwell Campus was the site of
the second PlugFest of the Digital Intermediate Frequency
Interoperability Consortium (DIFI) from 17 to 21 June. According to
final reports from the four-day event, which included three days of
testing by nine companies of version 1.1.0 and 1.2.0, and a
Showcase Day open to the industry, there was 93% interoperability
partial compliance and 75% full compliance to the standard.
DIFI members sent engineers to test DIFI compliance with their
products. DIFI member companies included Arka, ETL Systems, Evertz,
Keysight Technologies, Kratos, Lasting Software, ST Engineering,
Safron and Welkin Sciences
On Thursday a Keynote by ESA’s Head of the Ground Segment
Section of the Directorate of Connectivity and Secure
Communications, Dr. Ilias Pangiotopoulos, noted that ESA has been
seeking an adequate standard for digital ground. Dr. Pangiotopoulos
add that he was thrilled that this process is underway and
challenged the audience to do more, noting, “it (interoperability)
is not happening fast enough.” Several people from ESA were in
attendance.
The Keynote was followed by panel sessions, demonstrations, and
discussions with the DIFI member companies who tested the
interoperability of their products and demonstrated the power of
the DIFI standard to achieve interoperability. The event was
attended by representatives from ESA, UK Space, Eutelsat OneWeb,
Airbus, Rivada, Satixfy, KSAT, and Intelsat..
“A Fantastic Environment”’
DIFI Chairman and Kratos’ Senior Vice President of Advanced
Technology Stuart Daughtridge noted that among the benefits of the
PlugFest was its ability to identify problems before customers
experience them in the marketplace. He added that the success
percentages were exceptionally high and that issues uncovered by
testing would be resolved by DIFI’s Specifications Working Group..
“The collegial atmosphere at Harwell was perfect for testing this
standard. Competitors worked together for the benefit of the entire
ground segment industry,” Daughtridge added. He said that there
will be a version 1.2.1 of the specification to resolve the
problems discovered during testing in June release in the next
couple of months. DIFI said that it expects to issue version 1.3 by
the end of this year.
Simon Swift, Engineering Director for Digital Technologies with
ETL Systems, the host organization for the event, added that
companies were pleased that the PlugFest had been brought to Europe
and cited the PlugFest as “a fantastic, creative environment and we
look forward to the next one.”
For more information on the results of
DIFI PlugFest 2024 Europe email
plugfest@dificonsortium.org
For information on membership in DIFI visit:
www.dificonsortium.org or contact Stuart Daughtridge at
Stuart.Daughtridge@kratosdefense.com
About DIFI
The Digital Intermediate Frequency (IF) Interoperability
Consortium, or DIFI, has created a standard that enforces
interoperability on digital IF/RF technology. Digital IF was
developed to overcome the limitations of analog systems but, today,
vendor lock-in prevents it from delivering seamless
interoperability and severely limits its adoption. A truly
interoperable digital IF, on the other hand, will enable
transformation to a virtualized ground segment, reducing the total
cost of ownership and significantly boosting network and terminal
agility and scalability. Compliance with the DIFI standard will
ensure that satellite ground segments can seamlessly adapt to
rapidly changing space-layer payloads, orbits, and constellations.
Ultimately, DIFI promises to elevate the resilience, performance,
and capabilities of satellite networks and enable a digital
transformation that integrates satellites seamlessly into the
larger telecom, IT and GIS markets.
Contact:Joni Sterlacci, Sr. Program Manager,
j.sterlacci@ieee.org