J-Ortigia: multimedia services for mobile devices
Discover the power of the new S-band
The J-ORTIGIA project is the follow up of the successful ESA ORTIGIA project studying and validating the technical and related business feasibility of launching a family of Mobile Satellite Services (MSS) using new satellite resources in S-band. MSS aims to provide multimedia services to the mobile user in a cost-effective way by the interworking of satellite systems with terrestrial networks. The MSS system is based on the concept of hybrid satellite/terrestrial architecture to achieve a coherent combination of satellite and terrestrial signals.
During the project the DVB-SH technologies will be tested in realistic scenarios, both for handheld and vehicular use cases. A fully-operating terrestrial pilot will be deployed in Italy starting from October 2008 until the end of the project and ready to be used with the new S-band payload serving Europe, based on W2A satellite, ordered by a joint venture between Eutelsat and SES-Astra, that will be launched early 2009.
MBI's role
The J-ORTIGIA project is characterised by a number of on-field sessions finalised to run specific trials and measurements. During the project a series of actions will be taken in order to exactly define the different use cases, general architectures and scopes of each session. In particular, based on the results of previous studies and activities, the main relevant proposed configurations regarding the onfield sessions will be then consolidated after a post-processing phase. MBI will provide support for all sessions of trials and will integrate the terrestrial solution. MBI will be responsible for operations and monitoring of the Pilot Network installed in Italy.
The Partners
J-ORTIGIA is an ESA ARTES 4 project (ESA-Industry Partnership Programme) starting in April 2008 with a duration of 15 months and a global budget of over 4 million Euro. EUTELSAT will be the Prime Contractor with 8 partners, among the most important companies and research centres involved in the study of DVB-SH protocol and new S-Band services, including SES-Astra, Abertis telecom from Spain, DLR the German aerospace research centre, Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits (IIS) in Germany, AWE Communications from Germany, Unique Broadband Systems from Canada and MBI from Italy