Next to the waveform, related technologies should be developed to increase the security and resilience (via integrated multi-layered approach) and adopt the EPW on on-board processing satellites as well as to cater for next-generation technologies.

The targeted development should therefore be undertaken with five key considerations in mind:

1/ European autonomy and cooperation between Member States

The EPW should be capable of increasing the autonomy of Europe and of reducing the dependence on non-European satellite communication technologies for military operations with mission critical and sensitive information. At the same time, it should allow for interoperability between EU nations in a joint operational context to support the exchange of mission critical information and improve the efficiency of the operations.

2/ Affordable and efficient satellite services

The EPW should be affordable and include the latest efficiency satellite communication waveform, networking and equipment technologies to save OPEX (reduce bandwidth costs, require less resources for planning) and CAPEX (reduce equipment cost) compared to current existing expensive (proprietary) military satellite modems. The EPW should include already available innovative Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) satellite communication technologies (e.g., DVB-S2X waveform standard) in combination with the latest security and resilience technologies. There should no longer be a trade-off between the efficiency of the waveform and security. As such, high throughput demands should be achieved even with small satellite terminals using a limited amount of satellite bandwidth.

3/ Flexibility and scalability

The EPW should be portable on different modems with different form factors (board, modem, terminal), different platforms (fixed, on-the-move, on-the-pause) and be used across multiple types of satellite communication networks, different types of satellite constellations (LEO, MEO, GEO, HEO, high-throughput satellites, spot beams, regional and global beams), transponders (fully transparent-, processed transparent- and processed interactive, including software defined radio ones) and different network architectures (VSAT, point-to-point, mesh). At the same time, the EPW should be operational in different satellite frequency bands (at least C-band, X-band, Ku-band and Ka-band) and exchange, broadcast, multicast, unicast or relay a large range of satellite services and applications, including those requiring low latency, from low to very high data rates.

4/ Innovation

The EPW development should not just be a copy and paste of existing waveform solutions, licenses and technologies. The EPW proposal should be ambitious and innovative, combining the individual strengths of different nations and different members in the European satellite communication industry. The EPW programme should be open to support future requirements and capabilities needed.

5/ Security and resilience

The main feature of the EPW should be the increase in protection and resilience of the waveform to ensure secure information exchange over satellite for mission critical communications. Based on different threat analysis and Concept of Operations (CONOPS) definitions, the EPW development should focus on building satellite links that are resistant to electronic- and cyber-attacks, such as jamming, signal spoofing, eavesdropping and interception attempts. In addition, satellite link outages caused by rain fade, atmospheric and extra-atmospheric (relevant space weather events) conditions, or on-the-move communication challenges should be reduced to a minimum. The EPW activity should investigate how different security levels can be offered towards different military end users depending on their security requirements, their daily operations and the budgets available.

Proposals must address system prototyping of the baseband equipment (satellite modem), the on-board satellite active transponder and ancillary systems, as well as the testing of all prototypes (modems, on board active transponders and ancillary systems) operating the EPW in a controlled and operational military environment.