Top Satellite Companies and Users Join the DIFI Consortium to Accelerate the Industry’s Digital Transformation

PISCATAWAY, NJ: March 6, 2023:  The Digital Intermediate Frequency Interoperability Consortium (DIFI) announced today the addition of new member organizations to its growing family of satellite service, technology, and major user organizations.  Joining DIFI in the second half of 2022 were:

  • US Army C5ISR Center
  • Hughes Network Systems
  • Inmarsat
  • SES Engineering
  • Airbus Defense and Space
  • Safran Data Systems
  • Aurora Borealis Networks
  • Rincon Research Corporation

With the gain of these members, the DIFI membership now includes nearly 60 companies and agencies including the US Navy, Amazon Web Services, US Space Force, Microsoft, Defense Information Systems Agency, HawkEye 360, Kymeta, Kratos Defense & Space, Cobham, and Comtech.

“DIFI’s mission is to accelerate the digital transformation of the satellite industry,” said DIFI Board Chairman Stuart Daughtridge.  “That work starts with developing and making widely available a simple, open, interoperable Digital IF/RF standard that replaces the natural interoperability of analog IF signals and helps prevent vendor lock-in.  That’s why organizations like these are joining DIFI and serving on its Board: to help drive the future of the industry while ensuring that the evolving interoperability standard continues to meet their critical needs.”

About DIFI

For a half-century, satellite communication relied on analog infrastructure on the ground, which was a good match for the static design of GEO broadcast services.   Today, that infrastructure is increasingly incapable of keeping pace with advances in space – HTS and VHTS satellites, software-defined satellites, LEO and MEO constellations – and the growing dominance of data in the traffic mix.

Digital transformation can only benefit the satellite industry and its customers if they adopt solutions that terrestrial telecom has long used: all-digital transport, virtualization of hardware into software and sophisticated automation and orchestration.  The DIFI standard opens the door to those solutions by enabling the exchange of pristine digital copies of analog signals, moving processes from proprietary hardware to commodity IT, and accelerating innovation that shrinks costs, speeds time-to-market improves quality of service, and creates new capabilities.

 

Contact:

Joni Sterlacci

j.sterlacci@ieee.org