Zurück

Drucken

BATS

Broadband Access via integrated Terrestrial & Satellite systems

BATS addressed the integrated delivery of BroadBand (BB) future Internet services for European coverage according to the EC Digital Agenda objective to reliably deliver >30Mbps to 100% of European households by 2020. In order to accommodate the ‘unserved’ and ‘underserved’ areas of Europe, an ultra-high speed satellite system has been researched that provided order of magnitude cost/bit reductions and solutions to existing market barriers of bandwidth and latency limitations. The project was built on Terabit/s satellite studies conducted by European Space Agency and extended them into an overall network and service delivery concept.

A novel architecture has been proposed which combines satellite and terrestrial service delivery via an Intelligent User Gateway (IUG), dynamically routing each traffic flow according to its service needs through the most appropriate delivery mechanism to optimize the Quality of Experience (QoE). The integration complied with emerging home network environment standards and provided resilience and reliability of service provision to the users by bonding diverse access networks. To cope with such scenario, BATS also provided a unified network management framework.

The research project BATS (Broadband Access via integrated Terrestrial & Satellite systems), funded under the European Union 7th Framework Programme, addresses the delivery of BroadBand (BB) future services in Europe according to the EC Digital Agenda objective to reliable deliver >30Mbps to 100% of European households by 2020.
 
In order to accommodate the areas of Europe which are 'unserved' and 'underserved' in terms of BB availability, an Ultra High Throughput Satellite System has been researched that provides order of magnitude cost/bit reductions and solutions to existing market barriers of bandwidth and latency limitations. BATS proposes a novel  architecture which combined satellite and terrestrial service delivery via an Intelligent User Gateway (IUG), dynamically routing each traffic flow according to its service needs through the most appropriate delivery mechanism to optimise the Quality of Experience (QoE). The integration complied with emerging home network environment standards and provided resilience and reliability of service provision to the users by bonding diverse access networks. To cope with such integrated scenario, BATS provided a unified network management framework.
 
The evaluation of concepts took place via laboratory emulation with controlled objective and subjective testing and via field trials using prototype IUGs and capacity on in-orbit satellites to assess real user experiences.
 
BATS provided a unique opportunity for the European ICT and Satellite industries to take a lead in this novel integrated system and bring it to the worldwide market. Contributions to standardization groups, such as ETSI, fostered the adoption of the concept and supported the European Mandate 496: 'To Develop Standardization Regarding the Space Industry'.

The BATS concept

Integration of next generation satellite systems with established terrestrial infrastructure allowed BATS to supply communications to both ‘unserved’ and ‘underserved’ regions, and to improve the communication availability at urban areas all across Europe.

Objectives

The BATS concept was driven by the gap in the capability to deliver the E.C. Digital Agenda targets using conventional terrestrial BB technology. Intelligent integration of next generation satellite systems with terrestrial BB had the potential to fill this gap, but raised a number of challenges, ranging from developing and managing suitable satellites and how to derive QoE requirements from the user’s applications to route the data accordingly. To overcome these challenges, BATS focused on achieving the following objectives:

• Definition and validation of integrated end-to-end communication architecture for the provision of BB services in ‘unserved’ and ‘underserved’ areas
• Investigate and design new techniques to improve the use of all network resources and to increase the aggregate throughput of satellite communications links
• Define and validate an integrated network management framework to allow the efficient and cost effective deployment and operation of the integrated infrastructure
• Examine methods to determine QoE requirements from applications and define new test methods to assess real user experience by validating the integrated BB multi-access service
   

Research topics

The BATS research work was underpinned by research projects within ESA and Future Internet. They were based on four major topics investigated as discrete subjects:

• Integrated Network and Service Management
• Satellite Network Optimization
• Intelligent User Gateway and Service Delivery
• Economic and Environmental Sustainability

Additionally, two over-arching research topics have been investigated:

• Quality of Experience Validation
• BATS Integrated Concept and Architecture

Duration

2012 - 2015

Partners

Avanti Communications Limited
Airbus DS France
Thales Alenia Space France
Thales Alenia Space Spain
Mavigex s.r.l.
University of Surrey
Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der angewandten Forschung e. V.
Galician Research and Development Center in Advance Telecommunications
Türk Telekom
R Cable y Telecomunicaciones de Galicia S.A.
Optare Solutions
EMC
MulSys Limited
Climate Associates Ltd