O3b Networks Completes Satellite Critical Design Review with Thales Alenia Space
18 July 2011
O3b Networks Limited, announced today successful completion of the Critical Design Review (CDR) of the Constellation Space Segment. This significant event in O3b’s development validated that the satellite design will exceed its technical specifications, allowing O3b to deliver an even higher level of competitiveness to the market.
“The maturity of the design and the tests completed to date gives us great confidence in our system. Our customers will benefit from the improved performance and the system will now serve terminals within a broader footprint of up to 700km diameter. The constellation will offer over 70 Gbps of bandwidth on a global basis at round trip latencies below 130 milliseconds and at a cost that will deliver real value to our customers. Our vision to connect the unconnected has moved a step closer to reality,” said Brian Holz, Chief Technical Officer, O3b Networks Limited.
Satellite manufacturer Thales Alenia Space successfully passed the CDR by demonstrating completion of the design phase.
“The use of significant heritage has allowed us to complete the design ahead of plan, as we are on track to deliver the first eight spacecraft on time for launch in the first quarter of 2013,” said Emanuel Grave, Executive Vice President Telecommunication of Thales Alenia Space. “100% of the supply chain subcontracts have been started and have completed qualification reviews. Our manufacturing facilities are ready to begin integration of the O3b constellation early in the third quarter of this year.”
The CDR was a four-day process held in Cannes, France, during which O3b’s engineering team reviewed the space system design to ensure compliance against the required specifications. By fully characterizing the RF performance and completing qualification testing of the satellite antenna subsystem, a significant aspect of the link performance of the O3b system could be validated.
“We are determined to exceed our customers’ expectations every step of the way. Our capacity is fully flexible and can be targeted to meet their demands whether to support high throughput internet trunking, provide cellular backhaul networks or revolutionize bandwidth and connectivity in market segments such as maritime, oil & gas and mining. We are striving to deliver a combination of low cost, low latency and high throughput that has never been offered in the market previously and this was an important milestone along the path to delivering on that promise,” commented Brian.
