Space

Insufficient space, together with the requirement of withstanding pressures of up to 60 bar, have always impeded the installation of satellite communications terminals in submarines. The Spanish Armed Forces was the first to equip its S70 Agosta-class submarines with satellite communications, and Indra was entrusted their development.

The first terminals installed were a tremendous success for their robustness, reliability and the increase of features for enabling communications. Two years after the initial terminal was installed, other countries demonstrated their interest in the system, such as Germany, Turkey and Italy, amongst others.

Client needs are always the same: to increase the capacity for communications of submarines without a significant increase of weight or size of the required equipment. In general, satellite communications permit for establishing communications between places that are at great distances from each other. This makes satellite terminals a highly useful tool at sea, for both boats above the surface as well as submarines.

 

Indra has developed a family of satcom terminals to equip conventional submarines with communications via satellite.

Designed for communications using different frequencies, the terminals for submarines provide these with a capacity that is unavailable using HF and UHF radio bands.

Satcom terminals are used to replace radios, given that regardless of the area in which they operate, they can establish reliable, high-quality communications. These terminals designed for submarines of different countries' Armed Forces are based on two- or three-axes, stabilized platforms and different frequency bands.

These aforementioned platforms keep the antennas pointing the geostationary communications satellites, regardless of the submarine movement and under rough sea conditions. They enable high-capacity and high-quality communications for voice, data and internet access.

Therefore, they considerably increase the capacity for communications, replacing outdated HF and UHF radio technology.

The space they take up aboard is somewhat greater, but they are starting to be considered as essential and, therefore, the design of new submarines is being modified to permit the installation of a satcom terminal.

On another hand, Indra's terminal permits communications at the level of the periscope, wherefore submarines may remain undetected underwater while transmitting and receiving a high volume of data.

Satellite communications terminals permit:

• Increase the capacity for satellite communications of submarines (to date, conventional submarine communications were based on HF or UHF radio)
• Increase the current communications capacity of a radio terminal by one order of magnitude
• Submarines may remain submerged for longer time periods and, therefore, prevent being detected
• The terminal's capacity permits a submarine to use it for its command and control systems as well as for transmitting and receiving digital images, video and even for internet access
• Reliable system based on IP technology, therefore it is compatible with other commercial systems
• Practically the only means of communications used by submarines