Study on feasibility of SATCOM for railway communication

Final Report
generation of more advanced services. I-6 satellites are designed to remain in service for a minimum
of 15 years.
The ICE (Inmarsat Communications Evolution) PPP (ESA and UK Space agency contract) will offer
industry an opportunity to propose innovative technologies and solutions that could enhance and
expand the capabilities of mobile satellite communications, including associated products and
services. Inmarsat (as prime contractor) will undertake a feasibility study focused on identifying
enabling technologies, both in space and on the ground, that could maximise the throughput and
coverage of satellite communications; create lower cost, smaller terminals; develop modular
components that can be easily integrated into a broad range of devices; and maximise the commercial
opportunities presented through the development of connected applications – from automated
transport to environmental monitoring.
These new satellites are aiming at providing two main types of communication links: on one hand, an
evolution of the BGAN (I4) which is offering real-time service at higher data rates and on the other
hand, a new waveform for supporting the low data rates required for M2M related services by using
very small and low-cost terminals.
6.2.8 GEO S-band (Eutelsat W2A)
In May 2009, Inmarsat and Solaris Mobile (a joint venture between Eutelsat and Astra) were awarded
each a 2×15 MHz portion of the S band by the European Commission. The two companies were
allowed two years to start providing pan-European MSS services for 18 years. Allocated frequencies
were 1.98 to 2.01 GHz for Earth to space communications, and from 2.17 to 2.2 GHz for space to
Earth communications. Eutelsat W2A satellite launched in April, 2009 and located at 10° East is
currently the unique satellite in Europe operating on S band frequencies. Since it seems that such
initiative was not successfully progressed and taking into account that this band was proposed to
support mobile broadcast and interactive return channel, as it can be seen at [RD-04], it is considered
by similarity analysis against the requirements for the railway safety applications that it can be an
opportunity for both in order to, on one hand exploit the S-band satellite and on the other hand, to
provide a regulated band to allocate the railway safety services. It is important to point out that L-band
was discarded since it is already most saturated (e.g. allocating aeronautical services in AMS(R)S),
whilst 2GHz S-band was assigned to try to exploit the satellite mobile broadcast TV and interactive
return channel, through to DENISE [RD-04] and also SAFETRIP [RD-05] projects, but currently it
seems not to evolve.
Doc.Nº: SRAIL-FNR-010-IND
Edit./Rev.: 1/1
Date: 16/02/2017
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