Specification Working Group
The Specification Working Group is the primary forum for discussing and evaluating the Standard, subject to the review, and within the strategic direction established, by the Board. The Specification Working Group ensures that the Standard and any revisions to the Standard may only be finally adopted by a two-thirds approval of a quorum of the Board.
The DIFI Consortium Specification Working Group has been making great progress on the DIFI Standard. For those of you who have been following along or attended the monthly meetings, DIFI announced and posted its newest release v1.3.0 of its interoperability standard (IEEE-ISTO Std 4900-2021). The newest version was tested and reviewed during the DIFI PlugFest held in Germany on 8-11 September this year. Findings from the PlugFest were presented at the October 6th DIFI Workshop MILCOM event.
Moving forward this year and into next year the Specification Working Group meeting focus will focus on its Roadmap; and DIFI welcomes your participation. If you are not already a member or registered to the member portal, please visit and keep in touch with the latest news and events: https://members.dificonsortium.org
Certification Working Group
The Certification Working Group is the primary forum for establishing and maintaining a certification program in connection with the Standard, subject to the review, and within the strategic direction established, by the Board. The Certification Committee may, by a majority vote, make recommendations to the Board concerning certification matters, may coordinate and implement the same, and may undertake such other tasks as may from time to time be permitted by the Board.
Electronically Steerable Antennas (ESA) Working Group
The ESA Working Group is the primary forum for understanding how ESA will interact with DIFI and how they can be best deployed and integrated into networks. The goal of the group is to evaluate common ESA interfaces and requirements and what common approaches should be adopted by the industry. This group also focuses on use cases and opportunities that DIFI can give to ESA terminals for more optimal operation, and defining command and control for ESAs in a way that they can run parallel to transport layers, including the opportunity to link terminal/panel antenna performance to real-time link performance and improve interoperability. The Working Group looks to propose the mechanism for implementing ESA-specific M&C features.
Digital Ground Certification Working Group
The Digital Ground Certification Working Group will leverage Certification working group products and the DIFI Consortium government block. More current actions are reviewing MILSTD 188-164/165 to see what requirements noted might be obsolete related to DIFI or perhaps missing that DIFI can recommend to the government for additions. In addition, the Working Group is reviewing tests proposed to identify gaps.