The objective of the project is to design and develop a three-band terminal, X-band, Ku-band and Ka-band (commercial and military).

While X-band is used mainly for encrypted government and civil operations, Ka’s and Ku bands are mainly used to enable broadband services aimed to ensure the on-board personnel’s welfare.

People on-board access the open Internet for information and entertainment purpose, to communicate with their families’ through e-mail, social networks and voice/video over IP calls.

The antenna integrates into one single terminal all the bands in one closed loop on beacon. So, the “welfare” Ka’s and Ku bands are managed by the same terminal exploited to handle the “mandatory” X band.

Usually government and civil vessels equip two antennas for each band in order to ensure the service continuity even in case of physical failover of one of the systems; considering the three bands that would result in a total of six antenna systems.

The band integration into one single terminal will allow to reduce the number of the systems from six to two, therefore making possible significant savings in terms of cost, on-board space occupancy (a precious resource). Moreover, the maintenance costs related to the antenna systems will be heavily reduced.

Ships involved in truly worldwide coverage need fast reconfiguration of the telecommunication components when moving among different geographic areas. Currently existing solutions are not so flexible in terms of coverage areas (e.g. a small antenna for Ku-band coverage cannot work on lower power beams used in open ocean) or bands. Ka-band offers high speeds but limited coverage, therefore fall-back on X-band or Ku-band is a requirement.

The proposed antenna system addresses the new requirements of flexibility, ease of installation and uninterrupted service when moving across different coverage areas and degree of available services.