AsiaSat Satellite Fleet Operations using EPOCH IPS Fred HO, Director Technical Operations 20-21 April 2016 EPOCH IPS Users Conference 2016
Agenda 1. Satellite fleet update 2. Earth station update 3. 4K-Sat channels 4. AsiaSat EPOCH systems 5. Other Kratos Products & Services 6. Future challenges 7. Summary 2
AsiaSat Satellite Fleet
AsiaSat Fleet Development AsiaSat-6 AsiaSat-8 AsiaSat-7 AsiaSat-5 AsiaSat-4 AsiaSat-3S AsiaSat-2 (Deorbited 2012) AsiaSat-1 (Deorbited 2003) 1990 1994 1999 2003 2009 2011 AsiaSat-9 2014 2017 4
AsiaSat Satellite Fleet AsiaSat satellites' Power & Mass growth 25000 7000 20000 15000 10000 5000 0 Power (W) A1 A2 A3S A4 A5 A7 A6 A8 A9 1990 1995 1999 2003 2009 2011 2014 2014 2017 6000 5000 4000 3000 2000 1000 0 Sep. Mass (Kg) De-orbited Power Sep. mass 5
AsiaSat Earth Stations - update
AsiaSat Earth Stations Two Earth Stations Stanley Earth Stations Built in 1989 for AsiaSat 1 Unmanned but equipment are remotely control from the Satellite Control Center It is still in-use as an alternative TCR ground station Tai Po Earth Stations Built in 2003 as AsiaSat s primary earth station Provides satellite TCR, Teleport services and TOSS Satellite Operations Center and Customer Network Operation Center are located inside Tai Po earth station 7
Location of AsiaSat Earth Stations Tai Po Earthstation Unblock view to satellites Surrounded by mountains Protected by natural barrier 30km AsiaSat corporate office Stanley Earthstation Unmanned Unblocked view to equator 8
Stanley Earth Station Six antennae C-Band 11m x1 (Steptrack) 11m x1 (Monopulse) 9m x1 (Monopulse) 5m x1 Ku-Band 6m x2 (Steptrack) For AsiaSat satellites TTAC, TOSS and IOT purposes Provide redundancy to Tai Po earth station EPOCH systems are installed in Stanley earth station, providing similar TCR functions to control AsiaSat satellites in case Tai Po earth station facility is not available. 9
Tai Po Earth Station Physical data:- It is a 2-storey building 10,000 square feet office area 40,000 square feet facility area Functions:- Satellite Operation Center Customer Network Operation Center Playout Center TTAC Teleport (Uplink, Downlink, MCPC, Turn around & TOSS) 15 tracking antenna + 40 TRVOs in C, Ku & Ka bands Customer equipment & Data Center hosting area 10
Summary of antennae in Tai Po Earth Station C-band: Total: 8 11.3m x1 9m x1 7.3m x3 6.3m x2 6.1m x1 Ku-band: Total: 7 7.3m x4 6.3m x2 4.9m x1 Standby antenna Service antenna, Transfer orbit tracking & IOT FMA Ka-band: Total: 1 4.8m x1 11
Ground antenna and equipment M&C The 15 tracking antennae were built at different times by different vendors Ground M&C software is having the same problem as we had on the satellite control software many years ago; multi-vendor systems, different M&C user interfaces for different antennae Consolidate 5 different M&C platforms into one Kratos Compass system Thanks to the scalability and configurability of Compass And plenty equipment drivers are available Making it very easy to build antenna and equipment pages on the Compass system Due to operation practice issue, we purposely separate the EPOCH satellite control system from the ground M&C system, otherwise we can automate satellite procedure with ground equipment setting. 12
Other earth station services The primary functions of AsiaSat s earth stations are Provide satellite fleet TTAC Teleport services Traffic uplink Turn around service MCPC platform Transfer Orbit Support Service (TOSS) Supported 4 C-band TOSS for the past 2 years Two more this year IOT service Antenna calibration Antenna pattern cut test Intelsat TOSS network Tai Po earth station has become part of Intelsat s TOSS network since 2015 13
AsiaSat UHD/4K Laboratory
UHD/4K Laboratory AsiaSat established an Ultra HD research laboratory in 2014 Objectives are:- Evaluate end-to-end Ultra HD solutions, including Playout Compression technologies Compatibility of satellite transmission Cooperate with various partners in promoting and accelerating the reception of Ultra HD content in Asia. Launch the first Ultra-HD (UHD) television channel 4K-SAT in October 2015 on AsiaSat 4 satellite the second Ultra HD (UHD) channel 4KSAT2/HVN in March 2016 Viewers are under AsiaSat 4 C-band coverage and equipped with a HEVC set-top-box can receive the FTA UHD channels 15
AsiaSat UHD Platform Satellite AsiaSat 4 @122 E Transponder A4-C13H Downlink Frequency 4120MHz Downlink Polarization Horizontal Carrier Parameters DVB-S2 8PSK, FEC 5/6 29.72MSps Max. Throughput 71.99Mbps for 3-5 UHD channels with HEVC compression 16
AsiaSat s EPOCH Systems
Satellite Operation Center (SOC) All the satellite monitoring, commanding, performance and health analysis occur here Also hosted all the EPOCH TC servers and EPOCH workstations here. 18
EPOCH Installations vs AsiaSat fleet growth Number of satellites increased from 3 to 7 in about 12 yr EPOCH T&C servers & EPOCH workstations quadrupled 25 EPOCH installations vs AsiaSat fleet growth 20 15 A6 A8 A9 10 5 A2 A3S A4 A5 A7 0 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012 2014 2016 2018 Epoch TC RTWS OASYS Analysis W/S 19
Challenge for AsiaSat 9 SCF Expansion on computing equipment and network not proportion to the satellite growth rate Require an effort in hardware maintenance and spare part house keeping, despite x86 machines are commonly available Stress and pressure in rack space and cooling capacity Managing more number of server hardware than satellites 20
AsiaSat 9 EPOCH servers go virtual Thanks to Kratos ISI continuous improvement in their products and technologies, AsiaSat 9 EPOCH products are installed on Virtual Machines (VM) In principle, one 48-core CPU with 128 GB RAM server (Hypervisor) can host up to 8 virtual EPOCH FEPs. AsiaSat will install 4 hypervisors for AsiaSat 9 project; including redundancy on the primary site, redundant-site and testing purposes. Physical server EPOCH EPOCH EPOCH EPOCH EPOCH ESXi VM 1,2,3,4,5 Virtual h/w Hypervisor Host machine 21
Benefits of virtualization Improved Computing Efficiency Easy of expansion Adding new EPOCH TC server is as simple as cloning an existing VM. Backup and restoration Backup a virtual server (EPOCH s/w + O/S) is equivalent copying one large file to a storage media. Restore a backed up virtual server is by copying the saved backup file, even to a virtual host machine No installation of O/S and application. Reduce the restoration downtime Save rack space, cooling capacity and power consumption 22
Migrate more physical servers to virtual machines Each hypervisor is configured for 5 virtual machines. Only one will be used on each hypervisor for A9. Four other physical EPOCH servers can be migrated to each of the hypervisors in a latter stage 10 physical servers will be reduced to 2 servers 25 EPOCH installations after VM installation populate to other satellites 20 15 A6 A8 A9 10 5 A2 A3S A4 A5 A7 VM 0 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012 2014 2016 2018 Epoch TC RTWS OASYS Analysis W/S 23
Continuous improvement of EPOCH system AsiaSat has been using EPOCH system since 2004 AsiaSat upgrade the system when there is a new satellite launch Continue seeing improvements and new features in the software Popup chart ARES checkpoint User-definable derived PID Plotting historical and current data on the same plot, converting a telemetry display monitor into a analytic workstation EpochCortex Improvements are in user interface, faster and smoother user experience, display & layout enhancement and process automation If Kratos ISI could Adding recallable variable to the User-definable derived PID, this would improve the mathematical and logical operation of the derived PID Simplify the EPOCH workstation plotting axis and data span setting 24
MATLAB API Some telemetry points need more attention then others. The exiting limit alarm setting does not provide the needed detection mechanism and analytics And the derived equation is too complicated to be implemented in the current user-definable PID function Thanks to the API available in EPOCH software, it allows users to build MATLAB tools to integrate with EPOCH system to perform more complex real time or long term telemetry analysis AsiaSat developed several MATLAB tools integrated with EPOCH system to collect and analyze telemetry data in real-time manner. 25
Specialized EPOCH systems EPOCH is a highly configurable software Kratos ISI has specially configure an EPOCH system to limit its capability to control and monitor only certain portion of the satellite s payload and bus subsystems for Thaicom; AsiaSat s strategic partner on Thaicom7/AsiaSat 6 satellite. Pilot tested the Webic system which allows displaying satellite live telemetry on remote laptops, tablets and mobile devices 26
Other Kratos Products and Services Compass server Initially Compass server was used for CORTEX control purpose in one of the EPOCH project Then expand the Compass system to other ground equipment and antenna M&C in 2011 Further upgrade to 64-bit platform and consolidate other legacy M&C platforms to Compass system. Monics AsiaSat develops its in-house Carrier Monitoring System to monitor satellite traffic AsiaSat also install Monics for customer traffic troubleshooting and resolve interference issues. Geo-location services Through the connection from Kratos ISI, satid geo-location service is also being used by AsiaSat to locate illegal uplink stations SigX AsiaSat tested the SigX capability under different interference scenarios SpectralNet Evaluating possible application for remote stations Automation tool AsiaSat is evaluating Kratos ISI s Automation Tool for stationkeeping maneuver planning 27
Future challenges Does Kratos ISI have any plan to make EPOCH system capable of handling HTS s in-band flexible payload and multiple gateway operations? Does Kratos ISI have any plan to integrate EPOCH system with HTS manufacturer s proprietary payload control and operations systems? HTS operation is not just space segment operation, it also needs to handle a lot of ground based uplink, downlink and gateway equipment. Does Kratos ISI has any plan to integrate all the Kratos networks ground based products with EPOCH system to enable it for HTS operations? 28
Summary AsiaSat satellite fleet keeps expanding Earth station update, ground facilities also expand and evolve to meet the new satellite's TTAC and customers new business requirements 4K Laboratory set up and launch of the FTA 4K channels AsiaSat 9 EPOCH system goes virtualization AsiaSat utilizes EPOCH s API for MATLAB tools Other Kratos products and services HTS challenges ahead 29
Thank You 12/F, Harbour Centre, 25 Harbour Road, Wanchai, Hong Kong www.asiasat.com