Posted On: Nov 29, 2021
Amazon Web Services (AWS) announces wideband Digital Intermediate Frequency (DigIF) support for Software Defined Radios (SDRs) to help customers downlink more data in less time, saving cost. AWS Ground Station currently supports SDRs for narrowband (less than 54MHz), but in the past did not support SDRs for wideband (greater than 54Mhz). Expanding SDR support to 400Mhz for wideband enables SDR partners to provide new modulation and encoding schemes, helping Earth Imaging businesses, universities, and governments to optimize their operational costs.
With AWS Ground Station providing digital intermediate frequency (DigIF) output, Space customers can select an SDR of their choice to work with Ground Station and benefit from the speed of market innovation. These SDRs perform the modulation and encoding steps in the customer’s Virtual Private Cloud, giving the customer more control over their data and allowing more flexibility to move to different configurations, including higher data rates, as they scale their constellation. Customers can also stream DigIF from AWS Ground Station antennas to SDRs operating on AWS edge devices connected to the AWS global network. AWS Ground Station support for SDRs is available in Preview in the Middle East (Bahrain) region, with more region availability coming soon.
AWS Ground Station is a fully managed service that lets you control satellite communications, process satellite data, and scale your satellite operations. Customers can easily integrate their space workloads with other AWS services in real-time using Amazon’s low-latency, high-bandwidth global network. Customers can stream their satellite data to Amazon EC2 for real-time processing, store data in Amazon S3 for low cost archiving, or apply AI/ML algorithms to satellite images with Amazon SageMaker. With AWS Ground Station, you pay only for the actual antenna time that you use.
AWS Ground Station is now available in Oregon (US), Ohio (US), Middle East (Bahrain), Europe (Stockholm), Asia Pacific (Sydney), Europe (Ireland), Africa (Cape Town), Hawaii (US), and Asia Pacific (Seoul). Additional sites will become available in the coming months.